Slate Tablets Enable New Opportunities for Wireless Chip Vendors

Huge growth expected for embedded WWAN modules and chipsets.

Booming sales of emerging wirelessly enabled consumer devices will generate new growth opportunities for semiconductor suppliers, spurring soaring shipments of embedded Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) chipsets for slate-type tablets, according to iSuppli Corp.

iSuppli forecasts that by 2014, 20.7 million embedded WWAN chipsets will be shipped to the slate-type tablet market—a category that includes Apple Inc.’s iPad—up from almost none in 2009. Meanwhile, 2.1 million embedded WWAN modules will be shipped for the slate market by 2014, up also from virtually nil in 2009, for a whopping 498.4 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).

While the handset market undoubtedly will remain the driving force in the wireless industry, a crop of new wireless consumer devices such as slates, netbooks, eReaders and Portable Media Players (PMPs) have opened up an adjacent market, offering new opportunities for semiconductor vendors playing in this space. As a new decade begins in 2010, the objective in the wireless industry is no longer simply to achieve ubiquitous coverage, but rather to obtain ubiquitous presence for wireless-enabled devices in every aspect of living. This is the reason why many companies are exploring markets outside of the traditional handset for future growth.

With many devices using similar—if not in most cases, the exact same components—used in the handset market for communications requirements, an opportunity has emerged among all nodes in the wireless value chain to expand the total available market, with only minor modifications to existing products. All the new products utilize the same methods currently used in handsets and laptops to provide WWAN connectivity—by USB dongles on the one hand, or by embedded modules or chipsets on the other. While some products are expanding the overall wireless semiconductor market, the re-emergence of the slate segment—including the Apple iPad as well as competing products being rushed to market—has invigorated chip vendors.

It is no secret, then, why the wireless semiconductor market is excited about this turn of events.

Not Your Caveman’s Stone Tablets
iSuppli believes that content/multimedia consumption devices in the slate form factor will be the primary and most significant driver for the use of embedded WWAN capability in the next five years. As these devices utilize similar operating systems and chips as some smart phones, a new strategy is emerging from some wireless device manufacturers to leverage their ecosystem across multiple platforms. In doing so, these manufacturers will be able to offer consumers the ability for both device types to interact with each other in whatever way they see as appropriate for their specific business models.

This could mean the reuse or transfer of data and content from one device to the other, or seamless transitioning from using one device for one task to the next. iSuppli sees this interaction and strategy as a key driver for the success of OEMs in this market. In the case of Apple, this is already happening with the iPad and iPhone devices. Such a strategy is also occurring with Nokia Corp. through its partnership with Intel Corp., as well as with Hewlett-Packard Co. in its acquisition of Palm. Other OEMs are expected to follow suit, iSuppli believes.

eCompetition for eReaders
In their fourth year of availability, eReaders continue to be dominated by Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s nook. However, as the market continues to mature and business models are vetted and proven, other devices, more multifunctional in nature, are starting to address this market in earnest. The competition mainly is coming from the slate tablet and smart phone segments, but it conceivably could arise from any handheld device capable of being loaded with a third-party application.

Such multifunction devices, like the Apple iPad along with its own ebookstore, will present a fierce challenge to the incumbents. As more slate tablets come to market, that competition will only intensify. While single-function eReaders will continue to win the battle to meet the needs of bibliophiles and will grow at nearly a 40 percent CAGR for the 2009 through 2014 period, iSuppli believes that multifunction devices will be more widely adopted on a mass scale due to their more adaptable capabilities.