01 June 2006

Convergence-based Innovation Drives Consumer Demand

In a world with more cellular subscribers than wireline phone subscribers, and where the first commercial mobile networks now over twenty years old, it’s possibly a little surprising that the ‘mature’ cellular handset market continues to grow at over 20 percent per year.

The Lure of Added Features
A recent research report suggests that this continued phenomenal growth in wireless handset sales is being driven by manufacturers adding ‘features that consumers value and the rest of the industry can support’. Considering that, in March 2005, the UK became the 10th European country to reach 100% penetration for mobile phone ownership, the conclusion is that as consumers we just cannot resist the temptation of upgrading our cell phones to get our hands on those new features. According to leading research firm In-Stat, this behaviour will ensure that the mobile handset market continues to thrive for some years to come.

The challenge for manufacturers, of course, is to identify features that will have market appeal. In the past, good fortune has played a part. No marketer could possibly predict the mass appeal of GSM SMS (texting), which has been critical in sustaining mobile operator’s revenues over the past few years. Today it’s difficult to buy a handset that doesn’t include a camera, basic organizer, games, MP3 player and, of course, additional connectivity such as Bluetooth®. The ability to make voice calls has become almost incidental.

The industry trend is ‘convergence’. Increasingly, the boundaries that define device functionality are becoming blurred. Is it a wireless PDA or a smartphone? Whatever we call it, the engineering challenge is to cram more and more sophisticated features into a small, battery-powered box.

The Design Challenge
If the marketing people are having a tough time deciding which features will differentiate their handset, the challenge for the design team has become almost unimaginable. Convergence means managing vastly increased complexity and performance. While the availability of advanced silicon processes has helped, shrinking feature sizes mean that higher clock speeds are achievable, and lower supply voltages ensure that less power is consumed per transistor, though the move to advanced processes brings a whole new raft of technology and business challenges that must be addressed. Above all, these new features must be accommodated without cost and battery life going through the roof. What’s more, flexibility has become pretty important. While the marketers trade off feature sets against consumer desire, what they really want is the ability to change the specification without starting the design again.

ARM has built a position as market leader in providing embedded processor IP for mobile applications. For many years the key has been to provide processors that enable designers to balance PPA: power, performance and area (which is a key factor in determining the cost of a chip). Low power credentials have always been an important feature of ARM’s technology, and converged mobile products clearly require a low-power architecture at the heart of the design. However, the needs of converged products now go far beyond simply meeting PPA targets.

A platform for mobile product innovation will offer flexibility and design choice; for example the ability to implement a function in hardware for better performance and lower cost, or efficiently in software to accommodate changing specifications. It will recognize that multiple design constraints must be optimized together, because satisfying a single engineering parameter is not good enough. Such a platform will inevitably sit within a reference design environment, which helps the engineer through the development process, since time to market is critical, and designers strive to deliver a product that is both competitive and works first time.

Looking to the Future
A look into the future reveals convergence trends that are even more demanding in terms of design issues. Mobile TV is on the horizon, which will drive up the phones’ multimedia performance significantly. Use of the cell phone as a mobile wallet requires security to be taken more seriously. Implementing location-based services in a handset will add further complexity, but will consumers pay for it? If functions can be added without increasing cost, the design team will be applauded. The move to fixed-mobile convergence in telecoms markets has seen the introduction of handsets that are compliant with multiple cellular standards, as well as being WiFi-enabled. In terms of adding connectivity options to phones, wireless USB is just around the corner, presenting another huge market opportunity but another radio interface in the phone. All of these innovations demand something new from the embedded processors that sit inside the handsets, as well as the design infrastructure and technology platforms that engineers depend on.

When a new product is launched to the consumer market, the intellectual property within that design is typically conceived and developed at least two years in advance. Because of this, ARM works closely with partners and customers, and invests significant time and effort in working with technical bodies and standards groups to anticipate and understand the implications for tomorrow’s products. While consumers buy the latest features, ultimately advanced technology provides the platform for innovation that drives real growth in consumer technology markets.