MWC 2013 Day 4 – Missing Persons

 

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At this year’s show, what was missing is actually much more interesting.

  • It was all downhill from Monday, with very little news being announced but plenty of activity on the floor.
  • Against that backdrop it is probably more valuable to look at what was missing rather than bemoan the lack of news flow.
  • First and top of the list has to be bendable screens.
  • We have been waiting for these for over a year and still there is no sign of them.
  • Some prototypes were shown at CES, but a quick ramble through You-Tube will show you that those same prototypes have actually been on display for more than two years.
  • I think that the problem is encapsulation. The OLED substrate is very sensitive to degradation by oxygen meaning that the panel has to be perfectly sealed from the air.
  • This has proved to be much more difficult to do in flexible plastic than rigid glass and I suspect that the yields are still so low that Samsung can not yet put it in a product.
  • This is Samsung’s silver bullet against the ravages on commoditisation in Android but fortunately Samsung does not need it to work right away.
  • This could be another story in another 12 months.
  • Second, there was no big announcement from operators with yet another initiative to resist the ravages of becoming bit pipes.
  • This is actually good news as operator initiatives always seem to fail.
  • Perpetual failure is for two reasons:
    • They can never really agree on anything despite their interests being aligned.
    • Mobile operators have no real clue how to create any kind of service other than voice that will delight users.
  • There were some halfhearted noises and a booth from Joyn (RCS) but I suspect that these will fade away as users fail to rush in and make use of the service.
  • Third, there was no Windows 8 tablet from Nokia.
  • Again this is actually good news.
  • Windows 8 has not had the impact hoped for on the PC and Ultrabook market and yet another tablet would have only added extra cost to Nokia’s P&L that it frankly does not need.
  • I think it has its hands full, getting the Lumia 520 into volume, which, to me, is far more important.

 

  • Finally, RFM’s star of the show goes to Nujira.
  • Nujira offers a chipset and technique to perform envelope tracking.
  • Envelope tracking is a technique used to help the handset transmit a clean and efficient signal resulting in better performance and improvements in battery life.
  • I have known Nujira since it was camped out in a portacabin in Cambridge and for all of this time it has been adamant that envelope tracking was the future.
  • This year, it has been proved right with all of the big names in wireless semiconductors announcing products and blazing it all over their booths.
  • I cant help but think that as a pioneer of this technique, that Nujira will be a central player as envelope tracking continues to gain importance in building handset radio systems.

 

RICHARD WINDSOR

Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.

Blog Comments

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