Barron's on Wi-Fi's disruptive effect on 3G [paid subscription required]: Bill Alpert writes in Barron's about Starbucks and T-Mobile's Wi-Fi hot spot rollout, and speculates that although there are a flies in the ointment (shared bandwidth problems with free networks, spotty coverage, signal overlap), that there's still some potential for hot spots to take advantage of 3G's initial expense and its ongoing tardiness. Alpert makes just a couple of mistakes, implying that Wi-Fi is 2 Mbps (later he says that 802.11a could be 25 times faster); and that all the shared bandwidth used for free networks is not being shared under the terms of providers' agreements.

At the end of the piece, he notes that Intersil's share of the market is still 65 percent, which is remarkable for an incumbent in the middle of a disruptive market change. Alpert points out that Marvell, a little-known dynamo, just announced a set of Wi-Fi chips that eventually could sell for as little as $5. Such chips today cost $15 to $25. Marvell's radio and PHY single-chip design is all in CMOS, a very cheap alternative to the more exotic silicon germanium and other compounds often used in radio technology. (The MAC chip is still separate, but those are pure commodity items.) CMOS chips can be made in many plants and on extremely large wafer sizes, which reduces costs. Five dollars is a great target, and a surprising near-term one, but when they hit full-scale multi-million chip production, the cost will certainly hit even lower numbers.
7:58:36 PM    comment   

Trimble's new 5800 RTK Rover is a small, cable-free system that integrates a GPS receiver, GPS antenna, UHF radio, Bluetooth technology and battery with the TSCe controller and Bluecap module. The Bluecap module delivers cable-free GPS capability using Bluetooth technology with remote control of the receiver for RTK surveying.

7:44:39 PM    comment