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Steve.K
Is CSR really number one in Bluetooth Smart? It would be nice to see some ...
junko.yoshida
You are absolutely rigt about this, Selinz. The issue left for CSR to sort out, ...
Does Samsung deal leave CSR out in the cold?
Junko Yoshida
8/3/2012 12:43 PM EDT
Plain vanilla GPS goes to Samsung, but not indoor GPS
The biggest uncertainty for CSR, then, is indoor GPS technology. During the interview, Van Beurden made it clear that only “a subset” of CSR’s GPS teams – about 40 engineers – focused on “plain vanilla GPS” are going to Samsung. Meanwhile, the rest of the team will stay with CSR. Samsung, despite free access to CSR’s GPS technology, can’t have CSR’s indoor GPS IPs. Van Beurden said, “We, at CSR, intend to sell our own chips, and make money.”
Although he stopped short of calling it a crown jewel, the CSR CEO described the indoor GPS technology as “an area of phenomenal opportunity” for CSR.
Google, for example, is hard at work in creating indoor maps of public buildings. Indoor maps of airports, museums, department stores, shopping malls, hotels and others are currently available in selected locations in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada, the U.S., and Japan, according to Google. Many view indoor GPS as the next hot battleground for mobile handsets.
CSR has developed a method for accurate indoor positioning, by merging a number of existing technologies. To assist indoor GPS, CSR designed a back-end network server, featuring self-learning databases. The server collects signals from satellites, cell towers, Wi-Fi nets, sensors and other radios. Although CSR’s indoor GPS technology has been demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show and World Mobile Congress, the company has not rolled out its chip as a commercial product. The CEO said, “We expect this chip to start generating revenue in 2013.”
Google brought indoor mapping to CES this year. Does GPS in your phone track your location inside a building? Above, a handset with CSR’s new GPS chip (left) shows which booth you’re visiting, while an iPhone (right) only shows a street map of LVCC building.
CSR’s strategy plans to sell indoor GPS features as standalone chips to handset OEMs. But wait. Won’t indoor GPS also eventually get gobbled up in combo chips for handsets in the future?
Not any time soon, said Van Beurden. Sure, WiFi/Bluetooth/FM radio combo chips are common and popular, but curiously enough, the demand for the wireless connectivity chip that also includes GPS has been “spectacularly limited,” he observed. This is because “your combo chip is only as good as your weakest link.”
Demand for standalone GPS chips
Jagdish Rebello, IHS iSuppli director for consumer and communications, explained: “The one deterrent to this integration strategy is the difference in the pace of evolution of the two standards.” Wi-Fi keeps reinventing itself and transitioning to new variations of 802.11. Combo chips need to keep up with that progress. Meanwhile, companies like Qualcomm are now offering GPS in baseband, rendering GPS in the combo chip redundant. “There is a case to be made to keep WLAN/BT/FM separate from the GPS,” said Rebello.
IHS iSuppli estimates the shipment of WLAN/Bluetooth/FM radio combo chips – on unit bases – in 2012 to be 290k units, with WLAN/Bluetooth/FM radio/GPS combo chips at only about 8K units. Meanwhile, during the same period, standalone GPS chips are expected to ship about 330k, while baseband integrated with GPS will ship about 370K units. IHS iSuppli forecasts that the standalone GPS chips to continue to grow to 612K units in 2016.
Potential indoor GPS market
How long before the indoor GPS market is big enough for CSR to breathe easy? Well, as they say, don’t hold your breath.
Calling indoor GPS “sort of a nebulous term,” IHS iSuppli’s Rebello explained that many companies, including CSR, are looking at ways to augment the GPS signal in indoor environments with data from pressure sensors, mapping of Wi-Fi routers, etc. to provide location-based data and services in indoor environments. Rebello cautioned: “The applications for this right now are in their infancy. These are still in limited trials.”
ABI Research last May also cautioned that precision indoor location is stealing the headlines, yet wide-area alternative/hybrid location is where the money is today.
ABI’s senior analyst Patrick Connolly wrote in his research note: “Increasingly, tablet, camera, and portable gaming vendors are using location to differentiate and support additional services and revenue models. Others, like the femtocell market, are driven by mandates. To illustrate the potential, the non-cellular handset market is set to reach over one billion devices by 2017.”
What about the indoor location market?
ABI’s Practice director Dominique Bonte said, “The precision indoor market is almost a separate entity in itself, with some 30 companies offering a variety of technologies. By working directly with retailers, these technologies will empower them to own their own maps, data, and advertising, enabling them to own the customer and compete with Google, etc.”
So, expect a lot more turbulence before anyone makes a killing in the indoor GPS market.
Related stories:
-Teardown slideshow: Inside the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone
-Mr. GPS leaves CSR
-Samsung acquires CSR's mobile business
The biggest uncertainty for CSR, then, is indoor GPS technology. During the interview, Van Beurden made it clear that only “a subset” of CSR’s GPS teams – about 40 engineers – focused on “plain vanilla GPS” are going to Samsung. Meanwhile, the rest of the team will stay with CSR. Samsung, despite free access to CSR’s GPS technology, can’t have CSR’s indoor GPS IPs. Van Beurden said, “We, at CSR, intend to sell our own chips, and make money.”
Although he stopped short of calling it a crown jewel, the CSR CEO described the indoor GPS technology as “an area of phenomenal opportunity” for CSR.
Google, for example, is hard at work in creating indoor maps of public buildings. Indoor maps of airports, museums, department stores, shopping malls, hotels and others are currently available in selected locations in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada, the U.S., and Japan, according to Google. Many view indoor GPS as the next hot battleground for mobile handsets.
CSR has developed a method for accurate indoor positioning, by merging a number of existing technologies. To assist indoor GPS, CSR designed a back-end network server, featuring self-learning databases. The server collects signals from satellites, cell towers, Wi-Fi nets, sensors and other radios. Although CSR’s indoor GPS technology has been demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show and World Mobile Congress, the company has not rolled out its chip as a commercial product. The CEO said, “We expect this chip to start generating revenue in 2013.”
Google brought indoor mapping to CES this year. Does GPS in your phone track your location inside a building? Above, a handset with CSR’s new GPS chip (left) shows which booth you’re visiting, while an iPhone (right) only shows a street map of LVCC building.
CSR’s strategy plans to sell indoor GPS features as standalone chips to handset OEMs. But wait. Won’t indoor GPS also eventually get gobbled up in combo chips for handsets in the future?
Not any time soon, said Van Beurden. Sure, WiFi/Bluetooth/FM radio combo chips are common and popular, but curiously enough, the demand for the wireless connectivity chip that also includes GPS has been “spectacularly limited,” he observed. This is because “your combo chip is only as good as your weakest link.”
Demand for standalone GPS chips
Jagdish Rebello, IHS iSuppli director for consumer and communications, explained: “The one deterrent to this integration strategy is the difference in the pace of evolution of the two standards.” Wi-Fi keeps reinventing itself and transitioning to new variations of 802.11. Combo chips need to keep up with that progress. Meanwhile, companies like Qualcomm are now offering GPS in baseband, rendering GPS in the combo chip redundant. “There is a case to be made to keep WLAN/BT/FM separate from the GPS,” said Rebello.
IHS iSuppli estimates the shipment of WLAN/Bluetooth/FM radio combo chips – on unit bases – in 2012 to be 290k units, with WLAN/Bluetooth/FM radio/GPS combo chips at only about 8K units. Meanwhile, during the same period, standalone GPS chips are expected to ship about 330k, while baseband integrated with GPS will ship about 370K units. IHS iSuppli forecasts that the standalone GPS chips to continue to grow to 612K units in 2016.
Potential indoor GPS market
How long before the indoor GPS market is big enough for CSR to breathe easy? Well, as they say, don’t hold your breath.
Calling indoor GPS “sort of a nebulous term,” IHS iSuppli’s Rebello explained that many companies, including CSR, are looking at ways to augment the GPS signal in indoor environments with data from pressure sensors, mapping of Wi-Fi routers, etc. to provide location-based data and services in indoor environments. Rebello cautioned: “The applications for this right now are in their infancy. These are still in limited trials.”
ABI Research last May also cautioned that precision indoor location is stealing the headlines, yet wide-area alternative/hybrid location is where the money is today.
ABI’s senior analyst Patrick Connolly wrote in his research note: “Increasingly, tablet, camera, and portable gaming vendors are using location to differentiate and support additional services and revenue models. Others, like the femtocell market, are driven by mandates. To illustrate the potential, the non-cellular handset market is set to reach over one billion devices by 2017.”
What about the indoor location market?
ABI’s Practice director Dominique Bonte said, “The precision indoor market is almost a separate entity in itself, with some 30 companies offering a variety of technologies. By working directly with retailers, these technologies will empower them to own their own maps, data, and advertising, enabling them to own the customer and compete with Google, etc.”
So, expect a lot more turbulence before anyone makes a killing in the indoor GPS market.
Related stories:
-Teardown slideshow: Inside the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone
-Mr. GPS leaves CSR
-Samsung acquires CSR's mobile business
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junko.yoshida
8/3/2012 2:45 PM EDT
When we wrote the original story about CSR-Samsung deal, a lot of you who came to the forum had questions -- mainly focused around "so what does this leave CSR with?"
I had the same question. So, I went back to CSR and asked the CEO some questions. And above is what I found out.
The agreement looks like a lot more complicated than I had originally assumed.
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Indoor LBS
8/3/2012 3:21 PM EDT
See more about indoor location at http://www.indoorlbs.com
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junko.yoshida
8/3/2012 4:09 PM EDT
Thanks for the link. I see that there are a lot of possibilities for indoor GPS in here.
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selinz
8/3/2012 4:29 PM EDT
So rather than fight it out with all they other guys on "me too" technology at cut-throat prices, CSR will focus in getting their unique technology adopted? Sounds like a pretty good plan to me.
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junko.yoshida
8/6/2012 2:08 PM EDT
You are absolutely rigt about this, Selinz. The issue left for CSR to sort out, however, is how fast the company can get its seemingly unique technology adopted by the market.
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Gaurav Jalan
8/5/2012 1:06 AM EDT
Excellent article!
Interestingly it points out that the Bluetooth major is now focussing on acquired technologies to sail further.
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eewiz
8/5/2012 8:31 AM EDT
Couple of comments.
1. Even if the the indoor GPS is not gonna be integrated with WLAN/BT/FM combo, Wont they get integrated to the external GPS chip? Since CSR sold out that one, wouldn't it hamper their chances?
2. The value proposition that indoor GPS brings to the average user may be much less than that of the external GPS. When you are in a mall or airport, you always have a information counter or people/mall directory around you. You are never lost basically. So would the user be willing to pay another 10-20 $ for this functionality?
"To assist indoor GPS, CSR designed a back-end network server, featuring self-learning databases. The server collects signals from satellites, cell towers, Wi-Fi nets, sensors and other radios."
As expected, the indoor GPS is not a radio chip in itself, rather it combines signals from various other sources like wifi/gps/cell/nfc/acclerometer using CSR magic algorithm to make a prediction of the location. I feel this could be also done in an MCU integrated into the combo chip or the main application processor, rather than implementing in a separate chip and be more cost effective. And probably google will do a better job at " back-end network server, self-learning databases" etc.
There can be cool applications for indoor GPS like location based deals distribution, whereby if u go near a shop they send in a deal tailored to u. But similar things exist already using only GPS and not a big hit till now.
Inshort I feel CSR has taken a big risk by fully subscribing to its unproven hypothesis of indoor GPS being a big hit. Or they have a plan B?
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GREAT-Terry
8/5/2012 10:32 PM EDT
I also have doubt on the usefulness of indoor GPS and how good CSR can do in competing at the backend network. I agree with eewiz's opinion that it is still a big risk for CSR.
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junko.yoshida
8/6/2012 10:59 AM EDT
I wouldn't go that far. I still think indoor GPS presents an interesting opportunity for CSR, giving them for an opportunity to sell its own standalone GPS chip (with indoor GPS capability) into mobile handset market.
The standalone GPS chip market is alive and well, when you look at the IHS iSuppli's market forecast.
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Rack
8/6/2012 3:27 AM EDT
CSR will still sell Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS into markets it makes money - Automotive and Audio. These are growth markets, along with Bluetooth LE and Indoor Location.
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Rack
8/6/2012 3:29 AM EDT
Re- indoor location not being useful... who uses information desks? People over 50. If you have an app or map of your store on your phone, and can do a direct search for "product X" and even get directions, why would you go to a map or information desk?
I know whenever I go anywhere new with friends, they all have their phone maps out, even when there are easier ways available.
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Steve.K
8/6/2012 8:46 PM EDT
Is CSR really number one in Bluetooth Smart? It would be nice to see some numbers backing up that statement as TI, Nordic Semiconductor and others are also making big inroads into that market.
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