Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
This week saw the news that JinkoSolar has begun work on a 20 GW solar cell factory which will triple its manufacturing capacity by the end of the year, and that GCL-SI has begun work on a 60 GW manufacturing complex in Hefei city. While opening factories in China is hardly unheard of, the current scale of expansion in the solar industry is unprecedented, vastly more than this year’s global demand of say 130 GW to 150 GW. Massive expansion also doubles down on the short-term issue of solar glass and polysilicon supply shortage, even if those parts of the supply chain have recovered from their nadir in the second half of 2020. It’s worth noting that polysilicon supply deals…
Technicolor has delivered some encouraging news after a troublesome period of business for the vendor. Struggles have manifested for the most part within the Technicolor Connected Home division – from where the welcome ray of sunshine appeared this week. Shipments of Technicolor DOCSIS 3.1 gateways reached 8.1 million units in 2020, lifting total shipments to 20 million gateways worldwide since 2017. Technicolor says it has exceeded expectations for the technology in terms of shipments, while others would argue that cable technologies have experienced slower than expected deployments due to the heavy consolidation of cable markets across North America and Europe. From the poorly labeled bar chart provided in Technicolor’s press release, it appears that around 7 million DOCSIS 3.1 gateways…
One of Faultline’s most frequent criticisms of 2020’s virtual event roster was the disservice done to start-up communities. Platforms like CES need to use their tremendous scale and influence – which has become even greater under all-digital roofs – to better the technology industry. Instead, CES 2021 pulled a veil over the real technological innovations and issues affecting the entertainment and communications ecosystems today, much like the pandemic has pulled a veil over political issues (see separate story in this issue). Faultline takes pride in leaving the hustle and bustle of the usual hotspots of a show like CES to hunt down a handful of start-ups in a quiet corner, which has become a tricky endeavor in a Covid world.…
In snatching a tier 1 contract from right under the nose of ThinkAnalytics, recommendation software rival ContentWise appeared to have made a significant statement of intent for the year ahead after the company burst back onto the scene with a facelift just before Christmas. However, soon after ContentWise announced the breakthrough deal at Hong Kong-based giant PCCW Media, Faultline established that ThinkAnalytics actually vacated the PCCW account under mysterious circumstances some time last year. “We decided to commercially withdraw last year from PCCW,” said ThinkAnalytics CEO Eddie Young, in an emailed statement to Faultline that sparked our speculation. The Italian vendor’s digital experience automation and personalization software has been deployed by PCCW to completely rebuild the back-end of the Now…
Plume started this week with two new customer deals, signing Cogeco subsidiary Atlantic Broadband in the USA and Virgin Media in the UK, and now claiming to support over 21 million homes globally. Thankfully, Plume does appear to have eased off on its smart home claims, and is building up a head of steam to try and close the gap on rival AirTies. The latter claims to support over 30 million homes, with AT&T and Sky being its flagship customers. Sky’s proximity to Plume’s own flagship, Comcast, is cause for concern, should leadership try a shiny consolidation efficiency drive, but AirTies added Go Malta this week, via consulting from Divitel. Maltese homes are often stone-built and span over four floors,…
CES media day can only be described as a microLED minefield. Back-to-back virtual press presentations from all the usual electronics giants risked blurring into one as Faultline flitted from Hisense, to LG, to Samsung in a swirl of similar slides, then onto almost identical proceedings from Panasonic, Skyworth, and TCL. Very little set the six apart at the opening day of CES, with each boasting their own breakthroughs in the next generation of panel technology to take microLED/miniLED technology into the mainstream. Some splashed budgets on impressive visual effects, with a pair of horses even gracing the stage at one point, while others embraced the first all-digital CES with reserved decorum. Hisense had the honor of opening Monday’s media day…
CES 2021 virtual, 5G still dominates The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2020 was one of the last major events to be staged before the Covid-19 pandemic kicked in, but going virtual this year does not seem to have changed the priorities. 5G is set to dominate just as it did in 2020, with Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg kicking the show off with the first keynote on next generation cellular technology. There is an element of oxymoron though, about a virtual CES, given that the show in the past has been all about getting hands on new consumer gadgets. London Stadium turns on 5G network London Stadium has turned on a 5G network ready for when fans return to the venue…
Heading into the holiday break, Amazon announced that initial testing of its Project Kuiper low earth orbit (LEO) satellite hardware was showing promising results. Since then, the pace of rival announcements seems to have increased, as the rest of the market realizes that between SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper, the horse is getting ready to bolt from the stables. For Kuiper, the business case is pretty simple. Bundling broadband in with an Amazon Prime subscription, and ideally tying it in with a WiFi or mobile plan too, is a way to ensure that Amazon customers are always connected – always able to make that next purchase. Additionally, watching the flow of data should provide Amazon with a lot of valuable…
Anterix has been steadily building up a business as a private LTE networks provider in the USA, based on its ownership of a lion-share of the licensed portion of the 900 MHz spectrum band. The company (formerly known as Pdv Wireless) is particularly focused on the utilities sector, where there is rising demand for private cellular networks that could support mission-critical response and other requirements of this industry, without requiring the costly build-out or upgrade of fully proprietary networks and spectrum. Anterix is looking to license 900 MHz spectrum to utilities and has announced its first major customer, Ameren, which serves customers in Missouri and Illinois. The utility will have exclusive rights to use Anterix’s 900 MHz airwaves in its…
One of the fears that many operators express about the rise of open RAN architectures is the potential for the market to fragment between several different approaches, which would sacrifice economies of scale and therefore economic benefits. To address this fear, it is important for the key open network organizations, especially the high profile O-RAN Alliance, to work within a broader cooperative framework that includes other bodies focused on the open RAN – such as Open Networking Foundation and Small Cell Forum – as well as more established standards bodies and industry groupings. An important step in this direction was somewhat lost in the pre-holiday lull, but the O-RAN Alliance announced a new co-operation agreement with one of the most…
Selecting the key developments and milestones of 2020: September-December In our final edition of Wireless Watch for 2020, we took our second look back at the key events, for the cellular industry, of the year, covering the middle months. This week, we kick off our 2021 editions with our final look back at the strangest of years, with our selection of the developments on which we commented in the period from September to December 2020 – not necessarily highlighting the biggest headlines, but the stories which we feel will have lasting resonance in the year ahead. Of course, the impact of Covid-19 continued to be felt, mainly in the results announcements of operators and vendors – and some auction…
Just weeks after Nokia’s new CEO, Pekka Lundmark, killed off ‘end-to-end’ as the company’s key differentiator in networks, he has added more detail to his roadmap for a turnaround in 2021. In November, Lundmark made his first statements about how he proposed to address Nokia’s challenges, particularly those caused by setbacks in 5G architectures and early roll-outs. He effectively abandoned the strategy that was adopted when Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent, of focusing on end-to-end and converged wireline/wireless strengths to set against Ericsson’s more mobile-centric approach. That also saw some senior executives who had joined with the ALU deal, also depart, signalling a reversion to the mobile-first mantras Nokia adopted prior to ALU, but also a redoubled emphasis on areas where, despite…
Competition has heated up dramatically in the low end 5G chipset market with Qualcomm’s launch of its Snapdragon 480, which spans both sub-GHz midrange spectrum and higher millimeter wave bands. This pits Qualcomm squarely against Taiwan’s MediaTek in the field for lower cost chipsets aimed at affordable 5G smartphones, priced not much higher than the current crop of budget 4G smartphones. But while MediaTek and Qualcomm are about neck-and-neck in the overall mobile devices chipset market, with about 30% each, the latter leads in 5G chips with almost 40%, and sub-6/mmWave support should help preserve that advantage. The Snapdragon 480 is likely to supersede its predecessor, the 460, in 5G versions of a number of affordable handset models, such as…
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) shocked investors and analysts alike with its abrupt U-turn over an earlier decision to delist China’s big three telcos, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. The shock was amplified further when, just a day later, the NYSE U-turned a second time, to reinstate the original delisting decision. No explanation was given for this apparent indecision. The initial plan to delist the three telcos was announced by NYSE on the last day of 2020 to conform with an executive order signed on November 12 by outgoing president Donald Trump, outlawing American investment in Chinese firms deemed to be either owned or controlled by the country’s military. It appeared the NYSE felt forced to delist…
In the ongoing drama surrounding the transition to a new presidency in the USA, the potential impact on the ‘5G race’ is one of many unknowns. The Trump administration took a hard-line approach to trade and security battles with China, of course, and 5G became one of the high profile fights that took place within that context. The incoming Biden administration may take a more conventionally diplomatic approach, and even pull back from some of the strongest sanctions against Chinese technology companies, notably the ban on access – for Huawei in particular, or any of its component suppliers – to US technology. But a complete change of policy, or a significant relaxation of the sanctions, is highly unlikely in the…
It’s become customary for those in the wind sector to see a surge of announced orders for Vestas turbines just prior to a quarter’s end. The end of 2020 was no different, but the final tally of result spells something of a warning. While Covid-19 will be blamed as the chief culprit, a significant downturn in an otherwise booming US market, could indicate a downwards shift in its leading market share. That’s not to say that the order book has been quiet. In the final two weeks of December, and since Rethink Energy release its latest orders update, the turbine maker announced new orders amounting to 1,964 MW, bringing its total haul for the year to 15,509 MW for the…
ITM Power has become the latest company to complete the opening of a Gigafactory, with a new plant entering operation this week at Bessemer Park in Sheffield, UK. Rather than for batteries, where Gigafactories are starting to become commonplace, ITM Power will be the first to do this for electrolyzers in the green hydrogen sector. This early expansion in production capacity will be key to driving the company’s leading position in the sector, and the overall reduction of the technology’s cost. With the ability to produce PEM electrolyzers with a combined capacity of 1 GW per year, the company now looks set to lead the UK push to become a global leader in green hydrogen technology, while rebuilding bridges with…
Boston Metal, a Bill Gates-backed start-up based in Boston (unsurprisingly), has announced that it has raised $50 million in its pursuit to decarbonize the steel industry. As one of the largest and hardest to decarbonize contributors towards global warming, breakthroughs from such companies could result in the largest transformation of steelmaking in the past 3,000 years. The company, which spun out of an MIT lab in 2012, initially offered up $60 million through this recent funding round, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but has so far only managed to hit $10 million short of target, coming from eight unnamed investors. This builds on previous investment from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, as well as Prelude…
Five years ago this week… The Kudelski Group was onto a winning streak in India, as its security subsidiary Nagra was selected to launch a new digital cable and high-speed broadband service for MSO Venkata Sai Media (VSMPL), the largest cableco in Southern India at the time. Nagra was to provide VSMPL its anyCast content protection and OpenTV middleware technologies, the latter marking the first time this technology was deployed on the sub-continent. India was proving most bountiful for the Kudelski Group, which had signed a deal with DishTV in the year prior to provide products for its push VoD services. DishTV held a 26% market share of India’s satellite operations as of writing in January 2016. — …
Heading into the holiday break, Amazon announced that initial testing of its Project Kuiper LEO satellite hardware was showing promising results. Since then, the pace of rival announcements seems to have increased, as the rest of the market realizes that between SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper, the horse is getting ready to bolt from the stables. For Kuiper, the business case is pretty simple. Bundling broadband in with an Amazon Prime subscription, and ideally tying it in with a WiFi or mobile plan too, is a way to ensure that Amazon customers are always connected – always able to make that next purchase. Additionally, watching the flow of data should provide Amazon with a lot of valuable marketing and product…