iPhone and the Future of Marvell
“Apple plans to sell its iPhone through an exclusive marketing agreement with AT&T’s Cingular Wireless unit. While Cingular’s data network is woefully slow, the Wi-Fi feature will give the mobile phone high speed data capability when users can find Wi-Fi hotspots. To date, cell phone service providers have been reluctant to introduce mobile phones with Wi-Fi capability, fearing the wireless technology — which is often free — could cannibalize their existing data network service offerings.” (EE Times)
Marvell scored the design win to provide the Wi-Fi chip for the iPhone, and if the product and the functionality takes off, could have a nice upswing.
Last year, Marvell bought Intel’s Communication chip business for $600 Million. It was a risky move, since the division has consistently struggled to take off within Intel. Will the iPhone win allow the company to recover its investment?
Do you know if Wi-Fi chip companies and other intersted parties are putting together WI-FI networks around the country and shouldn’t they form a cooperative to do so?
I don’t know, Paul.
[…] Apple has made the decision to put Wi-Fi on the iPhone, with a chip from Marvell. Cisco’s iPhone family, marketed through its Linksys unit, already has Wi-Fi capability as well as VoIP features. […]
[…] as part of the series analyzing major players in the iPhone’s component ecosystem.( A related, speculative post about Marvell written prior to the iPhone’s release may also be worth […]
[…] As part of our coverage of the mobile chip vendor space, we looked at Qualcomm, InterDigital, Broadcom and Texas Instruments in great detail. We now move on to another interesting and aggressive fabless semiconductor company – Marvell Technology group. Earlier coverage on Marvell can be found here, here and here. […]