It is understandable why the competition continues to be intense in the smartphone IC market, especially for the core baseband/apps processor sockets, as winning the baseband socket often results in additional chipset content for the suppliers.


PS：Q出貨量是M的1.26倍，營收則幾乎是5倍。


基頻之爭，早以大勢底定？Intel、Broadcom、Marvell、nVidia都是浮雲，注定是Q與M的楚漢爭霸，CLSA如是說。

Nvidia is already shifting its investments, and we see a strong possibility that Broadcom exits in the next 6 – 9 months. Intel’s new management may have a bit more time, but we do not see enough opportunity to justify its $2bn+ investments. Marvell is least likely to exit in our view, but we expect it to remain a niche player. Overall, we expect the Qualcomm / MediaTek duopoly to get even stronger in the coming years and see positive implications for the overall industry profitability.

從2006年的15家銳減至現在的7家，逾半基頻廠家都拿去晾了，而真正獲利者僅存Q與M，大者恆大的定律充分體現。Q得星果與M擁中國，扎實穩固了兩家的銷售基礎。

Apple accounted for more than 50% ofthe 270m LTE unit number in 2013, and we estimate will account for about 40-45% in 2014. Apple uses its own A-series processors and currently relies on Qualcomm for 100% of its baseband ICs.

For LTE, Samsung has been sourcing nearly 100% of its chipsets from Qualcomm, with a recent low-end LTE design awarded to Broadcom. We expect Broadcom to make further progress and Intel and Marvell to also make some progress in LTE at Samsung in 2H14. However, it appears unlikely that either Intel or Broadcom will have as much share in LTE as they did in 3G.

二線基頻廠就算在LTE市場上獲得某些突破，離獲利階段依然嫌早。

Even if second tier vendors make significant progress in LTE, we simply do not see enough opportunity for all these vendors to achieve profitability any time soon.



中國手機品牌與M自3G時代伊始便一直合作關係穩固，一旦M的4G產品開始供貨，預計在4G上還會持續合作，否則也是選擇Q，因為公板設計實在太方便了。

While China Mobile’s target does appear aggressive, Qualcomm appears to be dominating the early shipments. We expect MediaTek-based LTE phones to start shipping in the next few months and expect a majority of MediaTek’s 3G customers to stick with the company as the China market transitions to 4G. Chinese smartphone OEMs lack the R&D capability of their international peers, and as a result, rely on turnkey solutions from MediaTek and Qualcomm. While MediaTek appears a bit late with LTE, we expect the company to maintain a strong share of the China LTE market longer term given its relationships with domestic handset manufacturers.


雖然CLSA分析師Srini Pajjuri的結論值得認同，不過有些因素可能被高估了。

2014年LTE手機的最大成長能量來自中國（三大電信商目標總合近2億支），Apple的LTE市占可能大幅遜於40~45%，因為缺席了大熱門的千元區塊。而鑒於目前M的LTE認證進度，4G手機大量出貨的時間點最快也是在第四季，今年中國4G戰場或是由Q領頭。