Strategy Analytics Report Predicts Baseband Market up by Year's End

According to Strategy Analytics, the market for baseband processors used in cellular devices will end the year with strong growth. This finding is somewhat surprising, taking into account the austerity measures in Europe, as well as the low growth in cell phone shipments that has been seen for 2012 globally.

Still, Strategy Analytics predicts the baseband market will defy doubts and -- at least in dollar terms — grow despite it all.

The report, known as the “Baseband Processor Forecast: 2012 Market Up Despite Slower Handset Growth,” states specifically that the percentage growth in revenue for the baseband industry will see 17 percent.

The industry consists of Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel and other suppliers of baseband processors, one of the vital components of cellular devices.

“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,” said Christopher Taylor, director of the market research service RF & Wireless Components.

If these calculations prove correct, Taylor said the market could hit “up to around $23 billion in 2017.”

The report from Strategy Analytics provides detailed history estimates and protected global shipments of baseband processors in both units and dollars, for the six major air interfaces including TD-SCDMA and iDEN, for the period from 2009 to 2017.

Stuart Robinson, director of the market research service Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies, qualified the statements of the report, saying “The market for UMTS [(W-CDMA)] basebands and associated chips 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.”

Robinson added a reason for the reported decline, stating that it was most likely “helped along by aggressive pricing by new S.E. Asian suppliers such as RDA Microelectronics.”