Network Operator
– China
– India
– USA
– Afrika, Asia and Latin America
– Germany
Infrastructure Manufacturer
– Motorola
– Alcatel Lucent
– Nokia Siemens Networks
– Nortel
– Ericsson
– Huawei
Device Manufacturer
– Nokia
– Ericsson
– Siemens Mobile
– Motorola
– Samsung
– Shanzhai
Semiconductors
– Mobile Industry Processor Interface Alliance
– Texas Instruments
– Qualcomm
– Siemens Halbleiter/Infineon
– Intel
– Philips Semiconductors/NXP
– Samsung
– Mediatek
– Marketshare

Telecom Industry after the Millenium

The 1990s were marked by the first boom in digital mobile communications. There were large growth figures worldwide and many companies tried to participate in this market more or less successfully. As described, the initial focus was on reducing price, size and weight. Well-known brands like Philips did not manage to assert themselves despite some interesting products. Philips went out of business in 2001 after many losses. Mainly Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens fought for market share. New players came from Asia, especially Samsung with solid products.

From the turn of the century onwards, additional challenges arose. Feature phones and smartphones became important. Mobile technology also needed to be expanded. First on 2.5 G technologies (GPRS/EDGE) and soon also 3G UMTS. Design also became more and more important. Over the years, this led to new players rising and old market leaders losing share and ultimately leaving the market.

Network Operators

China

There were three mobile phone providers in China:

• China Mobile was founded in Hong Kong in the late 1990s. It created a GSM network.
• China Unicom relied on CDMA technology and built a corresponding network with the help of Qualcomm.
• The third company to enter the market was China Telecom, which started the market with the Japanese PHS system.

China started introducing or licensing 3G quite late in 2008. China Mobile was the only provider to work with TD SCDMA, which they viewed as the “Chinese” 3G standard. In fact, this standard was developed by Datang in China together with Siemens AG. China Unicom acquired a license for W-CDMA and handed over its CDMA IS54 network to China Telecom. China Telecom adopted CDMA2000 as its 3G standard. This meant that all 3G standards were represented in China. However, there was little incentive for 3G providers to win customers and the 3G rollout was quite slow. This finally changed with the spread of smartphones.

India

India started mobile networks very late. This was mainly because the market was not privatized until after the turn of the century. The Indian market was fragmented and, like the USA, consisted of many metropolitan regions. Both GSM and CDMA were used. The first big players in India were Barti Airtel (with GSM) and Reliance Communication with CDMA. Thanks to cheap radio licenses and cheap mobile phones and, above all, extremely cheap tariffs, the market in India exploded and became the second largest market after China within just a few years. Mobile phones made it possible for most Indians to make phone calls for the first time. Landline connections have always been rare in India.

It was only in 2010, when licenses for 4G were already being auctioned in Europe, that India began auctioning licenses for 3G.

USA

In 2007, mobile operator Cingular bought AT&T Wireless for $41 billion. It took over the name of AT&T and from then on was called AT&T Mobility or just AT&T. In 2010, AT&T had 26% market share of wireless subscribers. This put AT&T just behind Verizon Wireless at 30%. Sprint was in third position with 16%. Actually Vodafone wanted to buy Cingular but could not pay as much as AT&T offered.

With the introduction of PCS, GSM became established in the USA. One of the PCS operators with GSM was Voice Stream which was founded in 1994. Another PCS GSM operator was Powertel, which was primarily active in Georgia. In 2001, Deutsche Telekom acquired Voice Stream and Powertel and established itself as an American mobile phone provider under the name T-Mobile. In 2010, T-Mobile had a market share of 10%. T-Mobile was the fourth largest wireless operator in the United States alongside AT&T, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. Of the “countless” mobile phone providers from the AMPS era, there were practically only four operators left in 2010.

Africa, Asia and Latin America

Some European countries had still strong links to states that used to be colonies in the first half of the century. So it was natural, that those connections where used to build branches in those countries.

Orange/Telecom had connections to their former (French-speaking) colonies. They set up 17 branches in Africa alone and some in the Far East. Orange also had networks in 12 other European countries. In total, Orange had 40 networks worldwide.

It was similar with Vodafone, which had 37 branches worldwide, 12 of which were in Europe (also in Germany) and 17 in Africa. Telefonica had close ties to South and Central America. Of their total of 34 branches, 9 were in Europe and 16 in Latin America.

European Operators used build a lot of branches in Africa, near East and Latin America.

Further international acting operators were:

• Mobile Telefone Networks (MTN) from South Africa, 22, 17 in Africa
• TeliaSonera Skandinavia, 22, 8 in Europe, 4 in East Europe
• Mobile Telecom Company (MTC) from Kuwait 22, 5 middle East, 17 in Africa
• Telenor (Norway) 21, in East Europe and in Asia
• T-Mobile 20
• Etilisat (Arabian Emirates) 19
• America Movil (Mexico) 18, most in Latin Amerika
• Millicom (Luxemburg) 14
• Hutchison (Hong Kong) 13

Germany

Viag Interkom was the third mobile phone provider in Germany. As already mentioned, British Telecom (BT) was involved in Viag Interkom. BT divested itself of its mobile sector in 2001 and called it mmO2. Since 2002, Viag Interkom has been called just O2 in Germany. In 2006, the Spanish Telefonica took over all O2 operators in Great Britain, Ireland and Germany.

All four operators, T-Mobile, Vodafone, O2 and E Plus, took part in the auctions for the 3G frequencies and acquired a license for $16.5 billion each. Two other new entrants also received licenses but withdrew later.

Infrastructure provider

In the years after the turn of the century there was a change in the mobile communications markets. In the early 1990s, the largest cellular networks were in North America, Europe and Japan. Already in 2000 the second largest market was China. It was second only to the USA and ahead of Japan. Over the next ten years, the number of mobile subscribers in China grew enormously and in 2010 China was the largest market with 860 million subscribers. There was also one country that had hardly appeared until now: India. It was already in second place in 2010 and not far from China with 750 million participants. Only then does the USA come into third place. There are practically no European markets left in the top ten places. Russia, Indonesia and Brazil were also new large markets.

Motorola

Motorola was still very progressive and innovative in 2000. They were the first to build a GPRS network for British Telecom in Great Britain in collaboration with Cisco. At that time, Motorola still had 150,000 employees. But then they were severely affected by the decline of the high-tech industry from March 2000 onwards. They also suffered from the bankruptcy of the Iridium system. They laid off many employees worldwide and in 2002 only had 93,000 employees. In 2004, Motorola separated from its semiconductor division, which became independent as Freescale Semiconductors.

Motorola was still doing well with its network technology for CDMA and CDMA2000 and was the only supplier alongside Ericsson. However, Motorola was not able to remain independent in the infrastructure business for long. 2010 it ultimately sold this unit to Nokia Siemens Network for around a billion dollars, which gained 50 new mobile customers and was able to improve its market position.

2010 Motorola left the mobile infrastructure business

Nortel

Nortel was a very successful communications infrastructure provider in Canada in the 1990s. It was hit hard by the decline in orders that accompanied the DotCom crisis and struggled for survival for a long time. Their market value fell from 398 billion Canadian dollars in September 2000 to less than 5 billion Canadian dollars in August 2002. Added to this were financial scandals and the fact that they were probably spied on by China for at least 10 years. In the years that followed, Nortel tried to shrink itself to health, but without success. In January 2009, Nortel was bankrupt and dissolved. The mobile communications division was taken over by Ericsson.

Alcatel Lucent

Also Alcatel was hit hard by the decline caused by the bursting of the dotcom bubble in March 2000. The company plunged into the biggest crisis in its history. Layoffs at many locations were inevitable. Many business areas were spun off. It wasn’t until 2004 that we laboriously returned to profitability.

Similar to Alcatel, Lucent Technologies suffered a technological decline in 2000. During the crisis, Lucent separated from its semiconductor division, which became independent as Agere Systems. The telephone terminal business was spun off and was henceforth called Avaya. The consumer division was sold to VTech. Of its 160,000 employees, Lucent only had just under 30,000 in the mid-noughties. Significant know-how was lost and Lucent was unable to benefit from the upswing from 2003 onwards.

A merger between Alcatel and Lucent was discussed as early as 2001, but it did not take place because Lucent saw itself as more valuable than Alcatel. In 2006 there was no alternative to merging with Alcatel. After the President of the United States, G.W Bush agreed, Lucent was taken over by the French. Bell Labs was also now “French.” The new company was now called Alcatel-Lucent.

At the end of 2006, Alcatel Lucent took over Nortel’s UMTS business. Despite mergers and acquisitions, Alcatel Lucent did not reach profitability. In 2010, losses exceeded $300 million. In particular, the Asian market was lost for Alcatel Lucent. They could not compete against Huawei and ZTE.

Nokia Siemens Network

Siemens had more and more problems to compete globally. In 2006, Siemens finally decided to enter into a joint venture with Nokia. As of 2007, Nokia and Siemens have been working together as the Nokia Siemens Network. However, NSN also suffered from competition from Asia and had to make many cuts and layoffs. In 2010, NSN had losses of half a billion dollars. Nevertheless, NSN took over Motorola’s mobile communications infrastructure division in 2010. NSN had already tried to acquire Nortel but had to leave the field to Ericsson.

Ericsson

Ericsson was also affected by the decline from 2000 onwards. The company was also burdened by the poor business of selling mobile phones. This business was merged with Sony and strict austerity measures were taken. As a result, Ericsson managed to return to profitability on the infrastructure market from 2004 onwards.

Huawei

In 2010 there were practically only 3 suppliers left for mobile communications infrastructure:

• Ericsson
• Alcatel Lucent
• Nokia-Siemens Networks

A new Chinese company appeared: Huawei. It was just founded in 1987.

At the end of the 1980s, China had the strategy to become independent of Western suppliers of telecommunications infrastructure. That’s why local manufacturers were given preference and government support. Huawei grew into a respectable company by the mid-1990s. From 1997 onwards, the company began to expand abroad and opened research centers in western countries. It began developing devices for GSM and UMTS.

While Western manufacturers were struggling in the early 2000s, Huawei received generous loans from the Chinese government to expand its business abroad. In 2005, Huawei already had more income from abroad than from its home market. The breakthrough began with a contract with Vodafone to supply 3G infrastructure. Huawei received more and more orders, especially because they were able to deliver significantly cheaper than Ericsson, Nokia Siemens and Alcatel Lucent, which were coming under more and more pressure. Huawei effectively took over the infrastructure business in Asia (except Japan and Korea) and was the main supplier in building the mobile networks in Africa.

In 2012, Huawei became the largest infrastructure manufacturer for the first time, overtaking Ericsson.

Huawei’s success was accompanied by several scandals. For example, Cisco was able to show that Huawei had copied Cisco software and used it for its own routers. However, Cisco’s dispute was double-edged as Cisco lost market share in China as a result. An agreement was soon reached and the disputes ended. It was also long assumed that Huawei was behind the espionage at Nortel. Huawei’s rise coincided with Nortel’s decline. However, this accusation was never substantiated.

Device Manufacturer

Nokia

At the beginning of the noughties, Nokia was number one in the mobile phone market with a 35% market share. They had a wide portfolio of devices in all market segments. The quality was good and the designs were always appealing.

In the mid-noughties, Nokia was able to benefit from market growth, especially in India and Africa. In 2003, a simple phone, called Nokia 1100, was released. It was specially designed for India and Africa and was built in large numbers. At its peak in 2007, one million units were built. Per week! In total, with 250 million units, it was not only the most-produced telephone of all time, it was also the most-produced electronic device of all time. The 1100’s most successful feature was a built-in flashlight. Furthermore, it was extremely useful for the market that the phone was extremely robust and reliable and had a long standby time (4 days).

Nokia as a brand was as good as Sony in the eighties and nineties. This company was always one of the first to appear on the market with new standards and performance features. In 2008, Nokia was at the peak of its success with a 38% market share. But then Nokia missed the leap into the new smartphone technology and bet on the wrong horse for a long time with Symbian. Switching to Microsoft didn’t make the situation any better. Nokia lost market share and fell to second place in 2012 behind the new leader: Samsung.

Ericsson

Ericsson built good, high-quality telephones. They were also able to build good products in terms of new features. However, their design could not always meet the taste of the time.

In 2000 there was an event that severely damaged Ericsson. They sourced their high-frequency chips from Philips Semiconductors. They produced these chips in Albuquerque New Mexico. On March 17, a fire broke out in this factory. It only lasted ten minutes and did little damage. But a semiconductor factory is a high-purity space and a fire with smoke is a huge problem. Initially it was hoped to be able to produce again within a few days, but it took weeks and Ericsson reacted too late and too slow. Nokia, which also purchased chips from this factory, was faster and was able to quickly find replacements. However, Ericsson made huge losses that same year, losing 3% of its market.

Ericsson tried to save costs by outsourcing all production to contract manufacturers (Flextronics). But it wasn’t enough. Eventually they separated the terminal equipment business from the semiconductor and base station business and put it into a joint venture with Sony in 2001. The hope was that with Ericsson technology and Sony’s know-how in consumer goods and design, success would return.

Ericsson’s core business took a few years until 2004 before it became profitable again with its base station and fixed-line business.

Sony-Ericsson tried to gain market share with Sony’s good brand name. This is how the “Walkman” with MP-3 functionality was created in 2006, which was aimed primarily at young people. Sony Ericsson held a single-digit market share but was not profitable. In 2011, Sony bought out Ericsson’s share and only sold cell phones under the Sony name.

Siemens Mobile

Siemens was able to stay in the mobile communication market for a long time. They delivered a solid design and were always able to come up with new features. In 2003 they were at a peak with 8.4% market share.

However, they didn’t have a good hand with smartphones. They also had problems with their operating system and using Symbian didn’t bring any improvements. The business became loss-making and it was said that Siemens Mobile was generating 1 million euros in losses per day. When Siemens got new leadership with Klaus Kleinfeld, it decided to divest itself of the telephone business. The mobile communications sector was transferred to the Taiwanese company BenQ in 2005 and an additional 420 million euros were given as start-up aid.

A few devices were sold under the BenQ label until BenQ also gave up a year later. Since then, no more German devices have been manufactured. The factory in Kamp Linfort was closed.

Motorola

Motorola had heavily invested in the Iridium. Its failure had severe impact on the business and billions of losses where made. Overall, it seemed that the former leader in the (mobile) radio business never recovered from it. Motorola built many different phones and got distracted instead of focusing on one product like Apple. Additionally, many if not most of Motorola’s products were ugly. It was as if technical innovations had been captured on circuit boards and then a plastic shell had been built for them. Ultimately, the former market leader not only fell behind Nokia, but also had to give up second place to Samsung.

For this reason, a design team was set up in 2001 with a star designer from Sony to address this problem. The focus was now on designing something “cool”, cool not because of the technology but because of the way it looks. The goal was to build the thinnest phone on the market, as a classic folding phone. For the first time, design was the starting point and the technology had to subordinate itself to the design. A principle that was primarily maintained at Apple. New materials were also used. Instead of silver plastic now aluminum. The result was called RAZR (because the phone was supposed to be thin, like a razor blade).

The RAZR phone was released in 2004 and 130 million units of this series were sold. Motorola managed to work its way back into second place and was briefly ahead of Samsung again. But then they missed the timely transition to smartphones. In 2008 they fell behind Samsung again, posting losses of $418 million. Motorola was finally sold to Google in 2011.

Samsung

Samsung appeared relatively late on the mobile phone market. By the turn of the millennium, Samsung had established a solid position as a manufacturer of solid mobile phones, working its way from 7.9% in 2001 to almost 13% in 2005. It benefited from the weakness of Sony Ericsson and Siemens Mobile. Samsung quickly recognized the importance of smartphones with multi-touch displays and quickly managed to establish direct competition with Apple with its Galaxy series. Thus, from 2008 onwards, market share increased at the same rate as Nokia’s market share decreased. In 2012, Samsung overtook Nokia to become number one with a market share of 22%.

SHANZHAI

At the beginning of the noughties, an industry specializing in cheap imitations of Western electronic goods was established in China. People were talking about Shanzhai products. From 2005 onwards, cell phones began to be built there. This was inspired by semiconductor manufacturers who sold inexpensive chipsets with software for cell phones, so-called system solutions. One of the main suppliers was the Taiwanese Mediatek. The Chinese not only sold the cheap phones in China but also “flooded” other markets in Asia, India and Africa, where China was very active. In 2010, Shanzai phones for 2G had a market share of 20%.

So-called system solutions with reference designs meant that practically anyone could build and sell a cell phone.

These illegal copies and products became a problem for many mobile operators, so much so that they even tried to identify and exclude them using the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity).

Semiconductor Provider

Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance

Semiconductor manufacturers faced several challenges for mobile communications. On the one hand, there were new mobile communications standards that had to be implemented, especially GPRS/EDGE and 3G/UMTS. Further functions have also been added to the phones.

• Bluetooth
• WLAN
• Camera
• Touch screen
• High-resolution color displays
• Mass storage
• Sensors

First of all, it was no longer possible for a simple processor like the ARM7 to handle all of these functions and at the same time handle the time-critical processes of the radio interface. This meant that there were several processors that had to be operated in parallel. WLAN and Bluetooth typically also had their own ARM-based processors, which only processed the corresponding air interface.

The new applications of a feature phone or a smartphone needed their own processor, an application processor. ARM had now developed such processors and made them available for various applications.

All peripheral devices had to be connected to the application processor. This required many interfaces, most of which were not standardized. The companies Texas Instruments, ST-Microelectronics and Nokia recognized this problem and founded a corresponding standardization committee, the MIPI Alliance, in 2003. (Mobile Industry Processor Interface).

Texas Instruments

Even before the mobile phone boom began in the 1990s, Texas Instruments had a leading status in the field of digital signal processing. As a result, they quickly became the leading partner for baseband solutions. There was a partnership specifically with Nokia.

Texas Instruments recognized the needs of smartphones and feature phones very early on. In addition to founding the MIPI Alliance, they also created a platform for the development of such devices: OMAP (Open Multimedia Application Platform). This essentially consisted of a powerful application processor, an ARM of the latest generation. Additionally a Graphic Processor Unit (GPU) was implemented on the processor. A GPU was available, for example, from the company PowerVR, which licensed such a design. With a GPU, graphics processes can be carried out much more efficiently than with a normal CPU. GPUs were developed in the eighties and nineties as separate chips for PCs and game consoles, primarily to improve computer games. Furthermore, special DSPs (Image Signal Processors, ISP) for image processing (for the camera) were brought onto the chip.

All peripherals for a smartphone could be attached to the OMAP processor. There were corresponding application boards on which corresponding software could be developed. Thus, OMAP became the platform of smartphones for many years.

Qualcomm

After Qualcomm no longer worked on end devices and base stations, the company focused primarily on the development of chipsets, especially on the development of baseband processors. Of course, they were leaders in this regard for IS-95 and CDMA2000. Only a few other manufacturers were able to develop chipsets for this. Since 1999, Qualcomm has also been developing baseband solutions for GSM. Thanks to their experience in CDMA, they also quickly found a solution for UMTS and W-CDMA.

Starting in 2002, Qualcomm supplied MSM6xxx series chips for all standards in three categories: Value Platform, Multimedia Platform and Enhanced Multimedia Platform. The first category focused on simple phones and was powered by a simple ARM7 processor. Like the OMAP platform, the multimedia platforms included a powerful ARM (StrongARM) to accomplish the different tasks of a feature phone and ultimately a smartphone.

Since 2007, Qualcomm has been producing a new series of processors called Snapdragon. Snapdragons has one or more ARM series application processors and GPU and ISP. Bluetooth has also been implemented in Snapdragon.

Snapdragon became the dominant platform for smartphones while OMAP ceased production in 2011.

Siemens Semiconductors/Infineon

As already described, Siemens Semiconductor was one of the companies that built baseband chips for cell phones. They were also very good at designing radio-frequency (RF) components. Siemens itself was of course the natural customer, which was able to gain a significant market share in the mobile phone market.

Semiconductor business required major investments and did no longer fit into the Siemens Group’s business area. For this reason it was spun off and made independent as Infineon. Immediately after its founding, the company went public.

Infineon was very advanced in terms of mobile communications technology and delivered the first baseband chip that could process both GSM and UMTS in 2001. The S-Gold chip that came out in 2003 had 2.5G functionality and could play MP3 files.

Infineon had different product lines. There was a product line for cheap cell phones that only had 2G functionality and those with 2.5 and 3G functionality. In 2005, Infineon succeeded in supplying Nokia with low-cost phones. This happened at the right time, as Siemens Mobile was no longer a customer this year and Infineon urgently needed new customers.

However, a success that was kept secret for a long time was the design-win of the Infineon chip set in the iPhone 2007. First the 2.5 G chipset and later the 3G chipset (for iPhone 3G).

In 2010, Infineon sold its mobile communications division to Intel for 1.6 billion euros and thus exited the mobile communications business.

Intel

Intel had long underestimated the mobile phone market. At the beginning of the 2000s, Intel CEO Paul Otellini didn’t believe in smartphones or viewed them as niche products. The Intel processors were also not really suitable for mobile applications. Nevertheless, Steve Jobs asked Otellini whether Intel wanted to supply a processor for the iPhone. Otellini refused. He later admitted that this was a big mistake. Intel had its own mobile internet strategy and it was called WiMAX. But when all the major mobile phone operators voted out WiMax in favor of LTE, Intel was forced to get into mobile phone chips by acquisition.

As described, Infineon managed to place their 3G chipset to Apple. However, Infineon was in a huge crisis in 2008 and was on the verge of bankruptcy. So they didn’t invest in LTE and focused on 3G in the hope that LTE would come much later. However, this hope was not fulfilled and Apple in particular demanded solutions for LTE.

Infineon solved this problem by taking over a small Dresden start-up company called Blue Wonder Communications in 2010, which had developed LTE IP. Blue Wonder Communications emerged from NXP employees who had already developed LTE IP for NXP. However, they were made obsolete and laid off by the ST-Ericsson deal. So they founded Blue Wonder Communication in 2008 and created a new LTE IP within a year. During this time, discussions with Intel began and eventually Intel took over the entire Infineon mobile communications division and was therefore in the mobile communications business. However, it lost the customer Apple to Qualcomm and it took some time before Apple could be won back.

Philips Semiconductors/NXP

Philips Semiconductors had special processes that were well suited to building high-frequency circuits. As a result, they became contract manufacturers for mobile phone manufacturers who had their own high-frequency developments, especially Ericsson and Nokia. Philips Semiconductors did virtually 40% of their mobile phone business this way.

They also continued to be the main supplier to Philips itself for a long time. Philips built mobile phones with moderate success in the 1990s. For this Philips had an integrated baseband solution.

In 1999, Philips Semiconductors bought VLSI, a well-known ASIC manufacturer. As a result, Philips gained more customers, especially in the Far East. In 2001, Philips exited the mobile phone business and stopped making phones. However, Philips Semiconductor took over the SW development of this division and was therefore able to offer a so-called system solution, i.e. a complete mobile phone with SW. This way, they got multiple design wins of smaller electronic companies e.g. in Asia. There was also a good relationship especially with Samsung when building simple GSM/EDGE phones. Around 2005, Philips Semiconductors supplied about 10% of the basic phone market.

In 2006, Philips went the same way as Siemens and others and spun off its semiconductor business. The name of the new company was NXP. This name comes from Next EXPerience. However, the mobile business continued to be difficult for NXP. That’s why NXP made a joint venture with ST-Microelectronics in 2008. This was called ST-NXP. A short time later, Ericsson Mobile Platforms was added, the semiconductor division that had separated from Ericsson. The joint venture was henceforth called ST-Ericsson. NXP sold its share of ST-Ericsson and left the mobile phone market completely.

Samsung

Samsung Electronics developed a good position as a manufacturer of mobile phones especially smartphones. However, Samsung Electronics also had a successful semiconductor division. The main source of income was memory components. They also offered a foundry business. For example, Apple had the first application processors manufactured by Samsung after they were rejected by Intel. Samsung gradually built their own mobile communications chips and were already in second place as a provider of semiconductor components for mobile communications in 2012.

Mediatek

While other semiconductor manufacturers had problems holding on to the mobile phone business, the Taiwanese company Mediatek entered this market late. Mediatek was a fabless manufacturer of chipsets that emerged from UMC (United Microelectronics Cooperation) in 1997. They entered the business in 2004 and focused on the low-cost market with a focus on Asia. They not only created chip sets for 2G and later 3G phones but also complete “system solutions” with associated software. So an electronics manufacturer only needed to write a little user software and design a plastic housing and could build a cell phone with little effort. From the mid-noughties onwards, this led to many cheap basic phones, sometimes pirated copies of branded phones, being produced in China (Shanzhai phones).

In 2007 Mediatek took over Analog Devices‘ mobile phone business. Until then, Analog Devices still had chipsets for 2G and 3G. In 2011, Mediatek was already producing chipsets for 500 million phones annually.

Market share of semiconductor companies

The graphic above show the winners and losers of the shift towards smart phones around 2010. Especially Samsung could gain a huge share of the semiconductor business. With Qualcomm they owned more than half of the market. Qualcomm had a very solid Modem business and could gain a big share of the smartphone business with Snapdragon. Mediatek gained mainly through basic phones where they took shares from ST-Ericsson and others. Biggest loser was probably Texas Instruments that where not successful with the OMAP business and could not establish itself as an independent system solution provider.