Samsung has selected Via Telecom to supply the CDMA
chipset for new Droid CHARGE handset that it is providing to the US market via
Verizon, according to ABI Research.
This may represent the first salvo of a market assault on
Qualcomm‘s undisputed command of CDMA markets
in the US and elsewhere.
In addition to the Via Telecom CDMA chip, Samsung is using its own proprietary baseband chip for the LTE.
We have been following Samsung’s decision-making closely
for some time, and we see a trend towards using suppliers from closer to home,
in the East-Asia region. For example, the RF for both CDMA and LTE in this
phone is supplied by Korean vendor FCI,” said James Mielke, vice president of
engineering.
This represents Via Telecom’s first venture into the CDMA
market in the United States, although ABI Research believes versions of
this phone will ship into all of Samsung’s CDMA markets worldwide.
While the choice of Via Telecom is not critical if
restricted to this one model, if a similar switch away from Qualcomm chipsets
occurred across all Samsung’s CDMA phone models, it would represent a real
challenge to the market’s status quo,” Mielke added.
By TelecomLead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
