Telecom Lead Europe: ST-Ericsson, a joint venture of STMicroelectronics and Ericsson, has posted net sales of $358 million in Q4 2012, thanks to Samsung GALAXY S III mini.
Operating loss was $133 million, 55 percent improvement since Q1 2012. The improvement is a result of the execution of the strategic plan announced in April.
ST-Ericsson said its NovaThor shipments grew 45 percent sequentially to 10.7 million units.
The chip company generated $43 million revenues from IP licensing.
Didier Lamouche, president and CEO, ST-Ericsson, said: “The fourth quarter was again a quarter of solid execution for us with revenues coming in as expected and a major growth of the shipments of our NovaThor platform, in part thanks to the new Samsung GALAXY S III mini.”
Samples of ST-Ericsson’s first LTE ModAp products became available in December and the first NovaThor L8580 ModAp platform based on STMicroelectronics’ advanced 28nm FD-SOI process was demonstrated on January 7 at CES.
ST-Ericsson has reached key maturity milestones with its advanced LTE modem which is in testing with customers and is anticipated to be commercialized as part of NovaThor L8540 ModAp platform in 2013.
The company unveiled its newest chipset – NovaThor L8580 ModAp – which is the first product to use FD-SOI technology and is the world’s fastest and lowest power integrated LTE modem and application processor platform.
For the first quarter 2013, ST-Ericsson expects a very significant sequential decline in net sales, mainly resulting, in addition to the first quarter seasonality, from a combination of no revenues from licensing expected in the quarter and further weakening of legacy product sales.
