MildTech.Net

In efforts to reduce production costs for the next generation handheld devices, Samsung Electronics will make its own WiMax and LTE baseband chips. Samsung, one of the largest producers in the world for mobile phones and other handheld devices using this chip manufacturers such as artificial Broadcom, Infineon and Qualcomm. With the creation of the chip, Samsung wants to reduce royalties they must pay to other companies.
The most royalties paid by Samsung is to Qualcomm, because the company has intellectual property of third generation CDMA standard. However, since a year later, Samsung has diversified chips that they use, by using products by Broadcom and Infineon which does not have a dependence on patents owned by Qualcomm.

For several years to come, Samsung seems to still be depending on the chip made by Qualcomm because the transition to the 4G network still needs more time. However, Samsung will have a big opportunity in the chip market for mobile devices, as early 2008, Texas Instruments had said that they will sell their wireless baseband division. Freescale, a semiconductor manufacturer originating from the division that Motorola released in 2004 also will consider selling their wireless chip business.

“We also strive to help create a multimedia chipset that can support various multimedia functions,” said Cho Young Chi, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning of Samsung on the EE Times, as quoted from Information Week, 30 December 2008.

Samsung stated that they will keep supporting the mobile broadband technology that will come, which according to a number of observers, will be a competition between WiMax with LTE. A number of telecommunications companies around the world have expressed support for the LTE. Generally, because of its ability to download with theoretical speeds reaching 100Mbps. The technology itself is not complete, and is estimated to be used after 2010.

Other players in the industry such as Comcast, Intel, Google, Sprint, Time Warner and several other companies supports WiMax. Despite having a lower maximum download speed, the technology is already available and used in some areas and continue to expand coverage.