Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better

Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 11:51 am

Intel announced its quarterly results a couple of days ago. They had previously downgraded 3rd quarter sales estimates but they managed to beat the downgraded numbers. If you look at the transcript of the call (I didn’t listen live) you’ll see very little mention of mobile and Atom. This is bad news for Intel. Its core… Read More


A Brief History of Mobile: Generations 3 and 4

A Brief History of Mobile: Generations 3 and 4
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 8:30 pm

The early first generation analog standards all used a technique known as Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). All this means is that each call was assigned its own frequency band in the radio spectrum. Since each band was only allocated to one phone, there was no interference between different calls. When a call finished… Read More


A brief History of Mobile: Generations 1 and 2

A brief History of Mobile: Generations 1 and 2
by Paul McLellan on 10-14-2012 at 9:00 pm

Mobile is one of the biggest markets for semiconductor, especially if you count not just mobile handsets but also the base-station infrastructure. No technology has ever been adopted so fast and so completely. There are approximately the same number of mobile phone accounts as there are people in the world. A few people have more… Read More


How Big is Mobile? Twice as many people use mobile phones than use a toothbrush

How Big is Mobile? Twice as many people use mobile phones than use a toothbrush
by Paul McLellan on 10-09-2012 at 3:47 pm

How big is mobile? Well, sometime early next year (or maybe even in the Christmas surge) there will be more mobile phones than people. Technically that is subscribers, so some of those “phones” are actually spare SIM-cards in international travelers’ pockets. But even so that is an incredible statistic. Also,… Read More


CEVA DSP Technology Symposium Series 2012

CEVA DSP Technology Symposium Series 2012
by Daniel Nenni on 09-25-2012 at 4:45 am

You are cordially invited to register to attend the CEVA DSP Technology Symposium Series 2012, which will take place in Taiwan, October 16th, China, October 18th and Israel, November 1st.

CEVA’s industry-leading experts and engineers will present a full day of lectures and seminars where you will learn about the latest technological… Read More


ARM, Intel, Apple: It’s Mobile Week

ARM, Intel, Apple: It’s Mobile Week
by Paul McLellan on 09-14-2012 at 4:02 pm

As Dan wrote here, we got invited by Intel to IDF and by ARM to a cheeky little party that they organized the day before. I asked ARM if they were announcing anything and they said basically that it would be foolish to make any announcement the week of their biggest competitors big show. Well, that wasn’t a rule that Apple felt like… Read More


Built to last: LTSI, Yocto, and embedded Linux

Built to last: LTSI, Yocto, and embedded Linux
by Don Dingee on 09-06-2012 at 8:30 pm

The open source types say it all the time: open is better when it comes to operating systems. If you’re building something like a server or a phone, with either a flexible configuration or a limited lifetime, an open source operating system like Linux can put a project way ahead.

Linux has always started with a kernel distribution,… Read More


Smartphones: Is It Game Over?

Smartphones: Is It Game Over?
by Paul McLellan on 08-08-2012 at 4:18 pm

The Q2 numbers for smartphones are now all in and the basic story is that Google is now registering an incredible million Android phones per day, half of them made by Samsung. That’s 85% of all the smartphones shipped last quarter. Android has (per IDC) 68% market share of all smartphones out there.

Apple grew by double digit… Read More


Using Accurate Models to Debug Cellphones

Using Accurate Models to Debug Cellphones
by Paul McLellan on 07-13-2012 at 10:54 am

There is an interesting Gizmodo review of an HTC Android-based smartphone. The basically positive review (as good as the iPhone, best Android phone at the time) ends up with an update:UPDATE: After more extensive testing there’s something a little weird going on. You’ll probably only see this while gaming, but there’s… Read More


Crushed Blackberry

Crushed Blackberry
by Paul McLellan on 07-02-2012 at 12:00 am

I wasn’t going to write about the cell phone business again for some time. After all, this is a site about semiconductor and EDA primarily. But the cell-phone business in all its facets is a huge semiconductor consumer and continues to grow fast (despite my morbid focus on those companies that do anything but).

But Research… Read More