Sequans says LTE more essential than WiMAX in the long term

Sequans says LTE more essential than WiMAX in the long term


LTE is rapidly becoming an necessary contributor to Sequans Communications' revenue stream, as the chipmaker's WiMAX business falters because of Sprint's shift away from that technology.

Sequans made that time in saying its fourth-quarter and year-finish 2011 financial results. The Paris-based company got its begin in WiMAX chipsets, however branched into LTE chips in 2010 when that sector began gaining traction.

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"Our This autumn outcomes and Q1 steerage mirror the truth that our largest buyer for WiMAX chips is continuous to focus on lowering stock after an abrupt shift in technique by Sprint in the U.S. Although new WiMAX units were recently introduced by operators in Japan and Korea and we count on orders from our largest customer to resume in 2012, the market for WiMAX chips is predicted to be smaller in 2012 than originally expected. Given our robust product offering, we anticipate persevering with to have a major share of the available market," stated Georges Karam, Sequans CEO.

Karam said Sequans is concentrating on the LTE market for lengthy-term development and famous that although the corporate's second-era LTE chips have solely been sampling for a short time, Sequans has achieved design wins with nine device vendors. "These customers are working closely with operators within the largest LTE markets--the U.S., China and India, as well as in some smaller markets in Southeast Asia, Japan, the Middle East, Australia and Brazil," Karam said.

For fourth-quarter 2011, Sequans mentioned its complete income was $11.5 million, a sequential decrease of 56 p.c from the third quarter of 2011 and a 50 % decrease compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. Internet loss was $5.6 million, or 16 cents per diluted share/ADS, compared to a net revenue of $3.2 million, or 9 cents per diluted share/ADS within the third quarter of 2011 and a net loss of $2.eight million, or 10 cents per diluted share/ADS in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Sequans expects LTE income from data devices to start ramping up through the second half of 2012. As well as, the corporate claims it is the only vendor providing a twin chip for units supporting each WiMAX and LTE, which may benefit WiMAX operators planning a gradual transition to LTE.

In October 2011, Sequans introduced three FDD and TDD LTE baseband chips, a companion RF chip and two new LTE platforms, supporting all global FDD and TDD LTE networks. The company still has a viable WiMAX business as well. In January 2012, the company introduced that it was providing the WiMAX chip inside the AAEON (an Asus firm) Robust tablet PC from Japanese operator KDDI. HTC, Cisco and Huawei are among Sequans' other chip customers.