ABI Says 280 Million Combination Chipsets to Ship by the End of the Year

WiMAX (News - Alert) technologies have drastically improved existing wireless and MMDS technologies. The mobile industry is still hungry for low power consumption and a single chip for all functionalities.

According to ABI Research,the shipments of “combo” chipsets for mobile devices that gather a variety of connectivity types in one small package are expected to approach 280 million worldwide by the end of 2010.

Xavier Ortiz, research analyst at ABI, said that the market for combo chipsets is taking off, but more slowly than what was originally expected. While mobile phones are the main market for these combinations today, ABI Research (News - Alert) believes that for true mass adoption, combos will have to penetrate other product types that require short-range wireless, such as laptops and consumer electronics devices.

The combination most commonly found in cell phones is Wi-Fi+GPS. Wi-Fi+Bluetooth combos have seen slower adoption due to performance issues because both technologies use similar frequencies, meaning they must alternate transmissions to avoid interference.

Several mobile handset manufacturers are ready to accept this for the sake of fitting greater functionality into a smaller package.

More than two billion Bluetooth+Bluetooth Low Energy combinations are expected to ship in 2015 and will eventually become universal in the Bluetooth segment. Ortiz noted that combos are finding their way into newer devices more than they are being retrofitted to older models. He added that many companies say that when they were using pre-combo standalone chips, they built relationships with a number of OEMs and mixed-and-matched to fit their needs.

Combo Short-Range Wireless Chipsets focuses on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, and UWB technologies, and will provide insight into their market trajectories as well as their makers' and users' future plans.