Date: 27/02/2012
MWC: Stiff battle-like competition between mobile phone OEMs
With in a span of less than two months after the big event Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012, the mobile device related companies which include both hardware, semiconductor chips and software are entering new battle field in the form of another big event Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2012 going on in Spain, Europe.
More than any technology trend and market trend, one clear trend is the competition is tight and is so much neck-to-neck.
Among mobile phone OEMS Apple, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Huewei, Motorola are in for the show game. Since the mobile phone started growing rapidly, the number of players in the industry is also grown rapidly. 5-10 years back, there was no Indian phone brand, now Micromax is one of the leading and fast growing Indian phone company. It's even better in China, where you find lot of quality phone designing companies.
Amid all this, innovation still powering the market, Apple's phones beats all the other by performance.
Nokia, which had huge market share is loosing its share, and it quickly coming out with products to catch up with both premier companies such as Apple and many low cost phone sellers in China and India.
Samsung, with such a broad base of its expertise in multiple areas has enough fuel to grow fast in the market, but still its smart phone is not the number one preferred phone.
LG, Sony, Acer, and bunch of Chinese and Taiwanese OEMs are in the race, but no unique advantage compared to Apple, Nokia and Samsung.
If this is the case with Phone OEMs, the software is also finding some competition. Mainly between Andriod, Windows, and iOS. Presently Android is ruling the market because Windows is a late comer. The year 2012 and 2013 will prove be test period whether Windows can give real fight to Android in Mobile space. Nokia is Microsoft's partner in achieving this goal. Because of this, Symbian is left behind. Since iOS is only used in Apple's phones, its scope as a competitor is limited.
Now, if we talk about the semiconductor chips which are powering these phones. ARM is a clear winner as a processor IP core vendor to many chip companies. Big question is why MIPS is not doing well in this business, MIPS has enough to compete with ARM, wonder why it is not finding a strong place in this market. Intel is going full steam in this market and may gain some share.
Among the chip vendors, Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, Marvell, Qualcomm, Broadcom, ST-Ericsson, Renensas Mobile, Nvidia, and many more are in for a close battle not only mobile device market but also newly emerging small-station base equipment market. Newbies like Mindspeed, Cavium and Tilera are also in the small-station market turf.
With so many players in the field, the mobile device market is far more crowded than the PC market in 90s. While convergence in technologies is happening, the convergence in competition is also happening in the form of increased players. TV, PC and Phone companies all are competing with each other.
To compete in the world of smart devices, companies have already overused the word 'smart'. So its not just smart alone, is something more is required in mobile space!