Keynote speaker

While voice still makes up the majority of mobile traffic around the world, the shift in killer applications to data and multimedia is already underway. Mobile Internet is becoming the key future revenue engine, with a strong demand among business users, who want to access information anywhere and anytime, as well as in emerging markets, where customers increasingly turn to mobile phones to connect to the internet due to the lack of fixed lines. Whereas the success of mobile internet in emerging countries primarily depends on affordable solutions enabling basic internet browsing, business activities require above all higher date rates, driving usage of new standards such as HSDPA, HSUPA, EDGE evolution and the upcoming standards LTE and Wimax. In its introduction, the presentation will give a short summary of the changes in the mobile paradigm and the current situation in the renascent mobile ecosystem. Over the last 25 years the mobile phone has fundamentally changed function — from a voice telephone to a text platform and now to a device that more and more resembles a multimedia computer, with mobile Internet being the key driving force. The entry of powerful Internet and consumer brands and now even luxury designer brands into the mobile handset arena marks the start of a new era which changes the dynamics and results in a stronger battle than ever to control the wireless value chain. The pressure is high to offer new services and features while at the same time streamlining and cost reducing solutions. For ultra-low-cost handsets, three key success drivers have been defined — power consumption, features and total cost. As far as the features are concerned, just offering voice, SMS and a black and white screen nowadays is not enough; adding an FM tuner, MP3 or even data services would be a means for the operator to make additional revenues. Color displays combined with a smart Internet browsing engine will build the basis for convenient world wid- web access. With regards to high-end phones, the challenges are myriad: the ability to seamlessly support multiple different air interfaces, the increasing amount of processing requirements due to the multimedia content and last but not least, power consumption. Due to the fast evolution of mobile standards, devices with high computational power are necessary to keep pace with this trend. The inner receiver complexity doubles every 2.5 years calling for VSLI horsepower from 0.1 GIPS for GSM to 2 GIPS for UMTS and beyond 10 GIPS for LTE. Accordingly, the necessary silicon area for these systems will increase and has to be considered when choosing the right technology for cost effective solutions. The presentation will finally show what the semiconductor industry can offer to respond to the challenges mentioned above. Thus, it will show how for the ultra-low-cost segment, hardware integration capabilities — that is to say the monolithic integration of radio frequency, baseband, power management and selected multimedia — can be a viable solution.