Does 4 – 5 Gbs at 60 GHz trump 1 Gbs at 3 – 10 GHz? 

A long term trend with industry alliance groups that serve to develop and specify standards is that these groups are often primarily made up of semiconductor manufacturers with a sprinkling of consumer electronics companies to spice up the mix. It is easy to understand the motivations and strategies of the companies driving these standards groups and WTRS has written extensively about this dynamic in the past. 

The main weakness to a dominant semiconductor manufacturer participation within standards bodies is that it tends to focus the alliance’s approach to the market to a tactical strategy of gaining account control with technology consuming customer companies. Through the influence of semiconductor manufacturers, the alliance is more naturally focused on a risk reduction strategy – a good thing, particularly when weighed against the capital and R&D expense exposure required to carry a new technology to widespread market acceptance. One observation is that the resulting feature sets of the technologies and standards resulting from these technology provider led alliances is weighted towards the “what we want to sell in order to maintain account control” side of the market requirements document. One such example is UltraWideBand which is sometimes characterized as a technology searching for a solution. 

Ignored somewhat are the consumers of these technologies, the large CE companies in this case, which are precisely the players that truly have the account control. There is a saying that if you want to find the person in a deal with with account control, look for the guy with the checkbook. Thus the CE companies have more natural control, as well as a better understanding of the actual current market requirements and future product features likely to gain a strong foothold in the market. 

The interesting feature of last week’s announcement regarding the WirelessHD Interest Group is that the membership is dominated by large Consumer Electronics companies such as LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., NEC Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Corporation and Toshiba Corporation joined together with one lone semiconductor firm SiBEAM. 

For those members of the wireless industry that may have been treking in Nepal away from access to news, what was announced were plans to write specifications to enable high-definition audio video streaming and high-speed content transmission for CE devices. Plans are to make the WirelessHD format available for adoption sometime in Spring 2007. 

Both the IEEE 802.15.3c group currently centered on SiBeam technology, as well as applications for the spectrum at 60 GHz are right now unproven in commercial products. Or, at least, unproven with the cost and power features required by CE products. If one considers the use of this protocol for transmission of uncompressed High Definition video inside a home, WirelessHD could find a potential market. However, it is difficult to make the argument that a consumer requirement exists today, or even in the next two years, for general, low cost availability of products that support or require multiple streams of simultaneous HD content for consumer applications. 

While the Certified Wireless USB I/F appears to view WirelessHD as a potential threat, it is unlikely to significantly impact the market penetration UWB- based Intel-backed standard because the use case which WirelessHD addresses in the home is not well served by an UWB solution. 

UWB is not a reliable technology to power wireless transmission of high-speed, streaming, visual multimedia content. There is too much potential for bit loss for wireless transmission in a dynamic environment in which people and items they carry, pull, or push are moving in and out of the path of transmission. The better application is for single stream communication for the purpose of bulk transfer of data at high speed or to support ad-hoc connection between fixed devices and mobile devices. 

Looking at the current technologies and the companies involved in the definition of next generation wireless products, there is a level of risk to successful deployment of new devices which is driving the consumer electronics manufacturers to develop multiple options for the future. The fact that the consumer electronics manufacturers are involved in the WirelessHD alliance means that they are not sure about the capabilities of products on the horizon and they feel the need to hedge their bets. 

In the context of other standards, such as MOCA and wireless 1394, there is a significant amount of technology competing for ‘standard-hood’ in the same use case: ‘fixed-to-fixed media transmission inside the home’. 

And so it appears that WirelessHD has a place in the market. This is not the end of the world for existing technologies and standards which focus on the mobile use cases, specifically in-car entertainment or USB cable replacement. 

Yet the CE manufacturers maintain that they do not want to add any technology that will add cost to their products. Margins are miniscule in this business and every fraction of a penny is important to keep, unless adding the new technology results in clear and significant additional services which the consumers can not do without. 

In conclusion, something new is coming. The consumer electronics companies are still hedging their bets in an attempt to identify what they are going to adopt, promote, and sell. Thus it is still anyone’s game and WirelessHD certainly has a good chance. Just don’t expect to see widespread adoption in the next two years.

• George West, Senior Analyst & CEO

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