MWC: Ericsson predicts radio modules to make their way to phones

Embedded radio modules have proliferated into every manner of device from eBook reader, to laptop, to meter readers. It’s only a matter of time before they make their way into the original wireless device, the mobile phone, said Mats Norin, vice president of mobile broadband modules at Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC).

“In the close future, you will see handhelds or smartphones with embedded modules,” Norin said. “It’s a way of entering the market with lower R&D costs and a way to get market sooner.”

The wireless handset market has always been built around the dedicated chipset as it has largely been dominated by a handful of global phone makers with the resources to develop and design devices with all of the necessary radio components. But the wireless market of late has welcomed hordes of new device vendors, most of whose areas of expertise lay outside of wireless communications. Rather than build RF divisions from the ground up they opted to implement radio modules, a pre-packaged all in one solution that gave their devices the necessary connectivity without the associated development costs.

Modules started in laptops and laptop PC cards and soon spread to machine-to-machine devices and even eBook readers, but as the handset business is still dominated by the big phone vendors we’ve yet to see a handset with an embedded module. Even Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), which went out of its comfort zone when it designed the iPhone, used a chipset.

But Norin said it is likely that as other consumer electronics vendors consider designing their own smartphones or mobile media devices, they’ll take a close look at modules, especially as they become smaller—making them easier to design into a device—and cheaper. “A number of device manufacturers are looking into the possibilities,” Norin said. “Modules really lower the barrier of entry.”

Ericsson has already witnessed the module gravitate to devices they weren’t originally intended for: its embedded laptop module is already in Sony’s eBook reader. And as it develops smaller and lower-power devices, he expects device manufacturers to push the envelope on the form factors for future devices.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Ericsson will unveil its high-speed packet access + (HSPA+) module which will support 21 Mb/s of downlink capacity. In addition, the module can be software upgraded to support even higher speeds if operators opt to implement multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) smart antenna technologies on their 3G networks, doubling their overall capacity.

According to the GSMA, 33 operators globally have upgraded their 3G networks to support HSPA+, though none are yet in the US. T-Mobile (NYSE:DT) is running HSPA+ trials now and plans to implement the upgrade network-wide this year. AT&T (NYSE:T) originally planned to move to HSPA+ also but decided last year to stop its HSPA evolution at its current 7.2 Mb/s iteration and focus instead on its upcoming long-term evolution rollout.