Telecom Lead Asia: The global market for baseband processors used in cellular devices will grow 17 percent in 2012.
Qualcomm, MediaTek and Intel are the main vendors of baseband processors for cellular devices.
The significant growth is despite austerity measures in Europe.
Increasing shipments of smartphones that use baseband-integrated applications processors such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, combined with LTE devices, which tend to use the most advanced baseband processors, will help push the baseband market up almost 17 percent this year, and up to around $23 billion in 2017.
Christopher Taylor, director of the RF & Wireless Components market research services, Strategy Analytics, said: “Increasing shipments of smartphones that use baseband-integrated applications processors such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, combined with LTE devices, which tend to use the most advanced baseband processors, will help push the baseband market up almost 17 percent this year, and up to around $23 billion in 2017.”
The market for UMTS [(W-CDMA] basebands and associated chipsets will also increase, but shipments of GSM / GPRS / EDGE-only mobile devices have peaked, and the market for basebands for these devices has started a slow annual decline helped along by aggressive pricing by new S.E. Asian suppliers such as RDA Microelectronics.
