Qualcomm and MediaTek held 56 percent share of cellular baseband revenues in 2009

BOSTON, USA: The cellular baseband processor market recovered well in the second half of 2009, as described in the latest report, “BASEBAND Market Share Tracker: Qualcomm Extends Revenue Share Lead,” from the Strategy Analytics Baseband Quarterly Metrics service module.

The report reveals that the cellular baseband market exceeded $11 billion in 2009, down about 0.7 percent as the market faced ASP (average selling price) challenges. The study also provisionally estimates that total cellular baseband processor revenues reached $2.8 billion in Q1 2010.

The cellular baseband processor market continued to show dynamism as market share fluctuations were evident in 2009. Qualcomm, MediaTek, Infineon, Broadcom and Marvell made progress in 2009 while ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments and Freescale had a difficult year. ST-Ericsson’s challenges can be attributed to continued product restructuring and share loss at its tier-1 handset OEMs. TD-SCDMA was the only bright spot for ST-Ericsson in 2009.

Stuart Robinson, Director of the Handset Component Technologies service, said: "Strategy Analytics believes that both Infineon and Broadcom benefitted from multi-sourcing strategies at tier-1 handset OEMs which significantly improved their baseband revenues and volumes in 2009. With Texas Instruments exiting from the baseband business, both Infineon and Broadcom are well-positioned to win most of the GSM/GPRS/EDGE business at Nokia in 2010.”

“MediaTek is now second only to Qualcomm in the cellular baseband market on the strength of the low-cost and grey handset markets,” commented Sravan Kundojjala, analyst.

“However, MediaTek was absent in the important W-CDMA baseband market in 2009, which we estimate represented one-third of total global cellular baseband revenues. Looking forward, Strategy Analytics believes that multi-sourcing strategies, new radio technologies (LTE, TD-SCDMA), mobile broadband and Asia baseband vendors will provide growth opportunities to MediaTek and other cellular baseband players.”