Spreadtrum to Launch New TD-SCDMA Chips
China Business News, 11/04/10
An employee of wireless baseband chipset maker Spreadtrum (Nasdaq: SPRD) said today that the company could release 40-nm TD-SCDMA chips next month. The source added that Spreadtrum would not rely on 2G services in the future, and that the company would seek to use the new chips to reduce the pressure the company has faced on its profits in the ongoing price wars. The source said that Spreadtrum's competitors were mostly producing 65 nm 3G chips, and doing so in insufficient amounts. According to the source, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and China Mobile (NYSE: CHL; 0941.HK) have expressed their hope that Spreadtrum will raise the profile of chip design companies in the TD-SCDMA industry chain with its new plan. Handset vendors Postcom and Hisense have already developed prototypes based on the new chips, and Spreadtrum is working to secure final network access. According to the source, there are approximately 300 prototypes using the new chip undergoing testing.
According to figures from iSuppli, Spreadtrum now has about a 22% share of the Mainland Chinese wireless baseband chipset market, while Taiwanese fabless chip maker MediaTek (MTK) has seen its market share fall to about 71% from more than 80% a year ago.
Keywords: China Mobile chipset Postcom Spreadtrum wireless MIIT market share 3G MediaTek CHL Hisense SPRD TD-SCDMA 0941.HK handset chip
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