Items Tagged with 'smartphone'

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Skyworks Solutions Inc., an innovator of high performance analog semiconductors enabling a broad range of end markets, announced it is supporting Samsung’s GALAXY S 4 smartphone platforms with multiple high-performance analog and front-end solutions.

An estimated 405 million handsets, including 197 million smartphones, were shipped in the first quarter of 2013, according to market intelligence firm ABI Research. Smartphone shipments grew 38 percent year-over-year (YoY) while feature phone shipments declined 5.2 percent YoY. Shipments of all handsets grew 12 percent YoY in the first quarter thanks to the continued strength of the smartphone market, which achieved an all-time high of 49 percent shipment penetration.

In many parts of the world, smartphone shipments account for a larger percentage of mobile handset shipments than feature phones and low-cost handsets. Yet within the smartphone class of devices, segmentation is increasing to three price tiers (low, mid, and high). Shipments of sub-US$250 low-cost smartphones will grow from 259 million in 2013 to 788 million in 2018, according to recent Market Data from market intelligence firm ABI Research.

Smart watches have been around for the last decade. The wearable computing device has failed to take off for one reason or another: they looked ugly, were too bulky, had weak functionality, or the battery life was not good enough. However, over the last nine months a number of new smart watches have emerged that could change consumers’ perceptions. Market intelligence firm ABI Research projects more than 1.2 million smart watches will be shipped in 2013.

ABI Research reports that Broadcom has put into production one of the world’s smallest multimode (GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS) transceivers. The sub 7 sq. mm. 40nm RF chip (BCM2193) was revealed just one week after the discovery of the 40nm RF chip announced last week. Broadcom’s chip was discovered second but it may actually have hit production a week or two prior to the Mediatek solution.

RF Micro Devices Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance radio frequency solutions, announced it has been selected by a leading smartphone manufacturer to supply multiple 3G/4G LTE components into a recently announced fourth-generation flagship smartphone platform.

New technology from innovative product development firm Cambridge Consultants can accurately detect someone’s location indoors when GPS drops out. A number of sensors and a custom algorithm determine the location, with an accuracy of within approximately 1 percent of the distance travelled. Yet the technology uses low-power, low-cost sensors and the device concept is small enough to clip on a belt. It also doesn’t need any existing internal infrastructure.

Answering the growing need for smartphone and tablet applications that update seamlessly, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) announces a truly wireless solution with a unique over-the-air-download (OTA or OAD) feature in its BLE-Stack™ 1.3 software for use with the CC2540 and CC2541 Bluetooth low energy system-on-chips (SOCs). Single-mode Bluetooth® low energy or Bluetooth Smart is increasing in popularity because it allows consumers to connect to their smartphones and tablets to  automotive, home office, medical and health, sports and fitness as well as mobile and PC accessories.

ON Semiconductor has introduced a new family of tunable RF components (TRFC) that address the design challenges faced by engineers developing the latest generation smartphones. The new devices optimally combine tuning range, RF quality factor (Q) and frequency operation, providing a superior solution to existing fixed approaches.

RF Micro Devices Inc. announced the expansion of the company's entry solutions product portfolio to include multiple new solutions for 2G and 3G entry smartphones. The new RF solutions are designed to solve the increasingly complex RF requirements of entry-level 2G and 3G smartphones related to cost, band count, and thermal dissipation.