Is Ceva lucky when the 4G era comes?

Ceva also boldly declared that the company's business will not be affected by the economic crisis, and revealed that its DSP core has been used in four of the top five mobile phones in the world. However, it is still debatable whether Ceva achieved this good result by careful design or by their luck. Another question is whether Ceva's good fortune can be maintained when 4G comes, because software reuse is no longer important in the design decision of 4G, and most designs need to be redesigned. Now, no one denies that Ceva has quietly expanded its market share with its competitive baseband DSP core in the past two years. "In 2008, Infineon's mobile phone baseband devices occupied 18% of the market share," said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts. "Infineon only used Ceva's core. Infineon, or Ceva, is clearly in the third place in the market. The top two are TI and Qualcomm. " In addition, Strauss revealed, "Ceva has penetrated into all 3G baseband devices of ST-Ericsson, so it is not unreasonable for them to claim that they will have a market share of 25% soon. Of course, the Ceva kernel is also used in countless 2G baseband devices. " Wertheizer, CEO of Nokia Effect Ceva, was the first person to admit that his company benefited a lot from Nokia's decision to adopt many suppliers' mobile phone chips in the open market two years ago. Nokia abandoned the company's internal custom chip development project, but used Infineon, Broadcom and ST baseband chips to design its GPRS, Edge and 3G mobile phones respectively. The baseband processors of three chip manufacturers all use Ceva's DSP core. As Nokia began to increase the production of mobile phones, "we also began to occupy more market share." Wertheizer said. Ceva's luck also benefits from TI's recent decision to withdraw from the commercial baseband processor market. "Because TI's market share will be zero by 20 12 years (TI admits this), it is likely to send Ceva to the second position in the baseband product market." According to Strauss of Forward Concepts, "Nokia is currently delivering a large number of 2G mobile phones, and its baseband products integrate Ceva cores provided by Infineon and VIA Telecom (instead of TI)." However, Strauss pointed out that TI will continue to provide 3G baseband products to Nokia until at least the end of 2065. Jeff Bier, president of Berkeley Design Technology (BDTI), agrees that Ceva is favored by the rapidly changing mobile phone market, but he thinks that calling Ceva "the biggest beneficiary" is a bit exaggerated. For example, Qualcomm, who has been making steady progress in the baseband market, believes that the market is becoming popular when traditional DSP companies (such as TI and ADI) quit. Bill said that Qualcomm designs and produces its own baseband and application processors, and "Qualcomm uses its own DSP" instead of the core of Ceva. When asked if it was too hasty for these DSP giants to quit the baseband market, Bier said, "The extreme popularity of baseband processors is not controversial." Strauss of Forward Concepts provides some background information: "MediaTek (independent of silicon foundry UMC) can reduce the pricing of 2G baseband products and transceivers of companies such as TI, ADI and NXP in the China mobile phone market. The overall strangulation of this profit space made TI finally have to give up this market. Of course, MediaTek also acquired Adi's mobile phone chip production line. " In this way, the scattered baseband DSP market is left to a few kernel suppliers, which brings good development opportunities to Ceva. But Bill warned, "How long can the baseband processor and application processor be independent, especially for the new generation of mobile phones with large quantities and low cost?" TI continues to invest in Omap, believing that the application processor market has a rare development opportunity. It is not clear whether TI is ready to integrate its application processor and baseband processor, or what plans it has in this regard, although it is a possibility to establish a cooperative relationship. 1 ? 6? 12