Strategy Analytics: Baseband Market Defies Gloomy Predictions for 2012

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Strategy Analytics expects the market for baseband processors used in cellular devices to end 2012 showing strong growth in dollar terms despite austerity measures in Europe and lower than usual growth in cellphone shipments globally. The Strategy Analytics report, “Baseband Processor Forecast: 2012 Market Up Despite Slower Handset Growth,” predicts a surprising 17 percent growth in revenue for the baseband industry, which consists of Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel and other suppliers of this central element of cellular devices.

“Increasing shipments of smartphones that use baseband-integrated applications processors such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, combined with LTE devices, which tend to use the most advanced baseband processors, will help push the baseband market up almost 17 percent this year, and up to around $23 billion in 2017.”

The data metrics report provides detailed historical estimates and projected global shipments of baseband processors in units and dollars for six major air interfaces including TD-SCDMA and iDEN from 2009 to 2017.

Christopher Taylor, Director of the RF & Wireless Components market research services, stated that “Increasing shipments of smartphones that use baseband-integrated applications processors such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, combined with LTE devices, which tend to use the most advanced baseband processors, will help push the baseband market up almost 17 percent this year, and up to around $23 billion in 2017.”

Stuart Robinson, Director of the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies market research service added that, “The market for UMTS [(W-CDMA] basebands and associated chipsets will also increase, but shipments of GSM / GPRS / EDGE-only mobile devices have peaked, and the market for basebands for these devices has started a slow annual decline helped along by aggressive pricing by new S.E. Asian suppliers such as RDA Microelectronics.”

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