Femtocell Chip Market to Grow to $2.4B by 2013

(Top News, 26 May 2008)

Femtocells look set to be a lucrative opportunity for semiconductor vendors, in addition to providing significant opportunities for carriers and OEMs. According to market analyst firm ABI Research, the market is primed to grow from just under $72 million in 2008 to over $1.8 billion in 2013, at an annual compound growth rate of over 300 percent over that time period. The significant promise associated with this market is drawing more and more silicon vendors into this market, including large vendors such as Freescale and Qualcomm.

However, addressing this market is far from straightforward. Vice President and Research Director Stuart Carlaw says that although there's no doubt about the significant potential of the market, it should be addressed with great wariness. For one, semiconductor vendors will bear the brunt of huge pressures from price declines. Carlaw adds that to meet those price declines there is actually a paradoxical need to invest huge sums in designing optimized and dedicated silicon for the femtocell market.

This puts silicon companies in the strange situation where it will actually cost a princely sum to get any where near the lucrative pot of gold at the end of the figurative rainbow, and that the decision to invest in the technology must be made at a time of uncertainty over the future direction of the market. Questions of technology, air interface, semiconductor approach, multimodality, integration, route to market, business model, and more all remain unresolved.

Click here for more information on the Research Brief "Femtocell Semiconductors"