Marvell's Weili Dai to critics: 'Don’t bet against us'

10/24/2012 5:36 PM EDT

Very funny and I suspect because it is so close to the truth.

10/25/2012 12:37 AM EDT

I think the analyst who suggested Marvell should drop out of the HDD market is a moron. The HDD market is a cash cow of significant profits for those involved and has a high technological barrier to entry. Marvell probably is able to use that cash as needed to move into other potential markets.

And the unnamed Chinese sources are questionable. Most people won't buy a smartphone if its battery life sucks. I feel Apple beat Nokia because Steve Jobs recognized this and focused on the end user experience. I personally don't see much advantage above dual core processors since most software is unable to take advantage of it.

10/25/2012 2:26 AM EDT

I met a former Marvell board member earlier this year. He said its a real problem that nearly half of Marvell's revenues are tied up in HDDs.

Sure HDDs will be around forever but its a slow growth market. Flash is the big growth market.

Marvell is not nearly positioned as diversely or well as it needs to be, not nearly as well as Broadcom already is.

10/25/2012 6:08 AM EDT

Marvell is practically controlled by a woman and her clones. This is not what a long-lasting public company should be run. Just this comment along should make any reasonably intelligent investor and analyst chilled: "I am confident that RIM will be leading the pack with its enterprise software capability"!

10/25/2012 10:59 AM EDT

With all due respect, I actually liked what Weile said when I asked her about RIM.

If I were a system vendor, I wouldn't like my parts supplier publicly going against me.

I thought it was honorable for Weili to say, "You should know that I go to the war for my customer."

10/25/2012 11:33 AM EDT

The problem is that MRVL leads by price, while BRCM has always led by innovation. That's how you get Apple, vs RIM.

10/25/2012 1:25 PM EDT

When the CFOs keep running from the company, that means there is a problem... Marvell is not a public company, its a family owned business. Until, the family leaves, there is no hope for the company. I bought MRVL shares at $50 in 2006, its now $7 (after 2:1 split). I will definitely make a bet against them (short'em).

10/25/2012 2:47 PM EDT

Dear Junko, thank you for another interesting article. And -- one certainly should wish Marvell and Weile to have a great success with their 3G/4G cell phone IC platform.

I do have a question for Bill Straus and his Forward Concepts since this is not the first time that EETimes uses his/their market share data.

By what accounting approach he arrived to his smartphone baseband market shares - whether they are in units or revenues?
Smartphones typically have either:
-- a standalone baseband (BB) - that goes together with a standalone application processor (AP)-- typically in high end smartphones a la Apple/ASIC or Samsung's Exynos processors
or
-- an integrated processor (BB+AP)- typically used in all low-end smartphones

According to Forward Concepts Marvell is about two times larger than either MediaTek or Broadcom in 1H12 smartphone baseband shipments...!? Could you, Junko, kindly ask Forward Concepts to explain - how was that arrived to - based on all known factual company data, including Broadcom success at Samsung and MediaTek's success in China's smartphones?

Of course, in feature phones there are only BBs -- just MediaTek sells there more than 0.5B BB units there but that was not the subject of the article and Forward Concepts graph.

Many thanks, once again and my regards

10/25/2012 10:17 PM EDT

Marvell, kind of missed out on the smart phone bandwagon in their focus on storage ICs but even now it's not too late since the market for quadcore based tablets and smart phones is seeing tremendous growth.

10/26/2012 12:41 PM EDT

Someone's comment that seems to imply that a woman driving a company is bad, is a totally foolish comment, from a close-minded thinker, not a world wide one.

However, most of what I got from the article sounded like someone desperately fighting for survival, and while that may get you food for the next day, to me it does not point to a carefully-considered strategy for long-term growth of a company. Passion for the products you build and the markets you chase is one thing; viciously defending everything you've gotten yourself into, sounds problematic. You can't force people to buy the end product. When the market moves, you can get left behind.

10/26/2012 9:09 PM EDT

Much like the consolidation that happened in Enterprise servers which dwindled down to 4 players (now 3), Telco to 5 (2 from china), the ASSP based semi companies will dwindle down to 4. The papttern in this consolidation is there will be high value player and a cost player. INTC, BRCM, QCOM. These are innovators. There is room for 1 or 2 value players. Mediatek has taken that stake. Perhaps MRVL can fit in the latter category since it has IP and channel, but high cost structure. If MRVL operates like Netgear - which is a US Company with primarily Taiwan/China operations and focuses on the value part of ASSP it has a chance. As the ASSP market consolidates as even $1B run rate in revenue is not sustainable in this winner-takes-all game, MRVL needs to be part of somebody (very difficult given personalities and product mix) or need to become the value player. So it has outsmart Mediatek at its own game to be a player. Increasingly value based SoC will be Taiwan/China based as it has happened with TV chips last year.

rkr