Nokia and Infineon mobile 4G challenge to Qualcomm comes down to openness

Coming very soon after Qualcomm announced it was working on combined 3G/4G chips for mobiles, another competitor has entered the chipset ring. Nokia and Infineon Technologies have announced that they will be working together on 4G chips with an open interface - which they claim will improve product roll-out and competition in the market.

Details?

Infineon Technologies is a massive global provider of semiconductors and microchips. It has more of its products in devices than you would think - along with its standing deal with Nokia, it manufactures several of the components in every iPhone in existence.

The deal that Nokia and Infineon have announced basically ensures that their important technologies in the field of 4G and high-speed 3G will work together perfectly in the future. Nokia is providing the actual modems in this deal, while Infineon is providing the transceivers that allow the modem to communicate through radio frequencies.

Prof. Hermann Eul, Member of the Infineon Management Board said that “Pairing Nokia’s advanced modem technology and Infineon’s best in class RF transceiver solutions, will give the industry access to very competitive chipset solutions.”

What we think?

For me, the really interesting part of this announcement comes from the words “open” and “licensable”. The modem design that Nokia is working on is licensable, so other companies can pay for the rights to manufacture the modems themselves. On top of this, once the RF transceiver and the modem are combined the interface with the resulting chipset will be open. What this means is the Nokia and Infineon are offering a reliable, tested 4G and 3G chipset that any mobile manufacturer can place in their device. Which puts them in direct competition with the increasingly legally belaboured Qualcomm as the rollout of LTE looms ever closer. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out.

And isn’t it very timely that the two companies are bragging about their openness and support of market competition while the misdemeanours of Qualcomm are fresh in our minds?