Aiming to become the global leader in chip-scale photonic solutions by deploying Optical Interposer technology to enable the seamless integration of electronics and photonics for a broad range of vertical market applications

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disco68

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What will be the next big driver for smartphones?

posted on Mar 05, 2015 10:39PM

Smartphone, Samsung in Trouble

With its Galaxy S6 announcement at MWC, Samsung and smartphones in general look to be in trouble and that's bad news for the electronics industry.

It feels like trouble ahead for smartphones in general and Samsung specifically.

The view from Barcelona showed Samsung looking like king of the hill. It announced at the Mobile World Congress its Galaxy S6 handsets, the first in the world run on chips built in a 14nm FinFET process. So how can a company leapfrogging Apple in smartphones and TSMC in process technology be in trouble?

Analyst Robert Maire says the new Samsung phones don’t have enough panache to shift momentum away from the red-hot iPhone 6. What’s worse, he suspects Samsung’s 14nm yields are low, making the process in which rival Apple is said to be making its A9 SoC for its upcoming iPhone 7 unprofitable for many months to come:

.......Beyond the battle over market share, I’m most troubled by what I am not seeing – any signs from #MWC15 of a next big thing for smartphones....

.....If smartphone growth slows for lack of a driver, as tablet growth is already doing, the electronics industry could be in trouble. Mobile devices have become not only one of its biggest markets but one of its main tech drivers.

Nothing else is close to taking on this role. Wearables such as smartwatches, smart glasses and VR headsets are still just interesting prototype seeking a market.