By Tiernan Ray

Wall Street analysts sent out another wave of missives late Tuesday and early Wednesday about their thoughts on the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, after an initial round of reports on Monday.

Glen Yeung with Citigroup spent some time with Marvell Technology Group (MRVL) and Nvidia (NVDA), and came away with the observation that “LTE baseband competition is set to intensify over 2014, but by 2015 all baseband suppliers should be offering their version of a working, “good enough’ LTE modem for OEMs as an alternative to product offerings from the market leader.”

Yeung offers two charts of how the competition will unfold in the near future, one showing the progress of LTE baseband chips (click for larger image):

And another showing the progress of integrated application processor-baseband parts:

Yeung comes away with some thoughts about both Nvidia and Marvell:

Nvidia stated that K1 draws 2/3 of the power relative to Snapdragon 800, and has ~1.5x the performance of Apple’s A7. Meanwhile, they reiterated that Icera i500 is data certified at Vodafone and AT&T, but refrained from discussing much related to future iterations, except to note that it will be Cat 6 and capable of VoLTE. On the integrated SoC side, Nvidia confirmed T4i is shipping in two mainstream smartphones, the LG G2 Mini and Wiko WAX, although management acknowledge these designs are unlikely to drive meaningful volume/revenues. Finally, Nvidia just launched the first “Maxwell” based GPUs and sees a top-to-bottom refresh in the coming year […] Marvell: In M&W, it seems that they are quite confident of shipping “several” million units of 4G LTE solutions per quarter in F1H15 targeting China Mobile’s supplier base. However, they noted there is some doubt that China Mobile would reach their stated goal of shipping 100M 4G terminals. Regarding platform launch delays that impacted last quarter, Marvell revealed that this is a shift from the month of January to February of some 3G designs.

Yeung also notes initiatives by Broadcom (BRCM) in so-called connectivity chips — WiFi, FM radio, Bluetooth, and NFC — with the company making a push into wearable tech:

BRCM announced their first global location chip for wearables and new family of controllers that could drive NFC into wearables and smartphones. In addition, Broadcom introduced the industry wide first 5G Wifi (802.11ac) 2×2 MIMO SoC for smartphones to further differentiate their combo solutions from competition (1×1 integrated SoCs). Aimed at addressing increasing video consumption on smartphone, the 2×2 MIMO products are claimed to deliver twice Wi-Fi performance of 1×1 MIMO while improving system power efficiency up to 25% when using wireless applications. Recall BRCM has cited a 75% LTE handset market share in connectivity during their winter analyst day and with their 2014 connectivity line-up, management expects to see connectivity revenue growth driven by unit proliferation (into new devices, loT) and ASP lifts. However, we remain cautious on BRCM due to recent connectivity inventory build and 3G pricing pressure.

RBC Capital’s Mark Sue reviews the presentations yesterday by BlackBerry (BBRY) CEO John Chen, noting that the value of the company’s BBM instant-messaging software could rise from here based on Facebook‘s (FB) purchase of WhatsApp for $19 billion:

BlackBerry is extending BBM to Windows Phone, Nokia X and other platforms as it works to build on the base of its existing 85M BBM users. BBM can be the biggest value growth component, in our view. In comparison, the recently acquired WhatsApp has grown to 465M users, while LINE has ~350M users and WeChat has 270M subs. Given BBM’s ties with BES, BlackBerry believes BBM has great potential, yet acknowledging it’s still early days. It’s the only “secure” messaging platform with investors likely to reassess the value of this sub-base. Rate of growth and user demographics varies by messaging platform, which can assign different values per messaging assets. BlackBerry introduced eBBM, offering enterprise-class messaging features.

He’s also interested in how F5 Networks (FFIV) is protecting its fiefdom while expanding in network security:

F5 believes it’s well positioned to benefit from growth in core ADC, while also focusing on expansion into market adjacencies. In ADCs, F5 highlighted its win-rate in ACE replacements remains high and it’s winning deals vs. competition, albeit acknowledging Citrix may be winning in some VDI deals, as well as when bundling traffic steering with its virtualization solutions. In Security, F5 is not yet seeing a competitive pushback from network security incumbents and continues to focus on R&D, which F5 believes should help drive share gains. F5 pushing into $1B DDoS market. DDoS protection market is a $1B opportunity and F5 indicated its solutions are well placed vs. competition. In diameter routing, F5 highlighted its Traffix solution has made wins against incumbents (Tekelec: part of Oracle) in key North American tier-1 accounts and is making progress in tier-2/tier-3 opportunities.

UBS‘s Amitabh Passi met with Juniper Networks (JNPR) CEO Shaygan Kheradpir, and he reiterates a Buy rating on the shares, and a $33 price target, writing that “initial focus remains on trying to re-invigorate the entrepreneurial spirit in the company and re-connect Juniper with its primary customers in a deeper manner.”

Following Juniper’s announcement last week of a so-called integrated operating plan, met to assuage the complaints of activist shop Elliott Management, Kheradpir’s “Initial priorities remain on rightsizing the company for the current revenue run-rate, optimizing processes and functions, and focusing on innovation that matters.”

Kheradpir is looking at four main customer types:

Carriers, cable companies, web 2.0, and special enterprises, with the assumption SMB will transition to being customers of one of the 4 primary customer types. Juniper sees a strong build cycle occurring now across much of its customer base and intends to remain relevant in routing, switching, and security. In security, Juniper is hopeful to leverage its strong position with carriers to continue to remain relevant in cloud security.

The company has been reviewing its product line with an eye to some things it can get rid of and “gaps will be clarified that can then be addressed via M&A.”

Freescale, whose shares he rates “Perform,” expects to benefit from China‘s LTE buildout this year, and the rise of small cells:

Tone of the meeting was bullish as FSL is benefiting from initial and accelerating deployments for TD-LTE base stations (BST) in China. Mgmt believes the industry is in the early innings of a two-year infrastructure spend cycle led by China Mobile. China Unicom and China Telecom are also beginning to deploy a mix of TD- and FD-LTE BSTs in 2014. In the US, FSL believes Sprint’s BST spend for LTE is expected to pick up in 2014 as the company plays catch-up with VZ/T. Europe remains relatively sluggish, although the market could pick up in 2H14. FSL remains the leader in the comms processor market with ~52% share. While initially late to multicore, FSL has ramped that business to ~$900M/year in sales. FSL’s multicore business scales from 2 to 8 cores, although a majority of revenues today are dual- and quad-core. Share at the low-end (single- and dual-core) is 60%+, and FSL believes its legacy Power PC architecture will likely deter customers from switching to CAVM’s (MIPS/ARM-based) Octeon III products. Small cell deployments are starting to gain traction in several regions, and management believes a significant ramp will occur over the next two years. Management continues to execute well on improving growth/profitability, and we see FSL on solid structural footing. However, with $5B+ in net debt (post-secondary) and modest normalized growth, we see investors likely to trade a discount for the near/medium term and see upside limited for now.

He is also encouraged by some baseband progress from Intel:

We attended the INTC investor track this week at MWC. With a high-end focus on LTE-A, INTC expects to be the No. 2 LTE BB vendor (behind QCOM) exiting 2014. Though no time frame was given, INTC expects LTE BB share to migrate higher to 30% over time, similar to legacy Infineon 3G market share. Dual-core Merrifield remains on track for 1H14 and quad-core Moorefield is on track for 2H14. Just-announced Cat-6 LTE 7260 will ship in 2Q14 with several OEMs. INTC expects similar wireless GM as handset peers and is also developing a connectivity solution. INTC continues to expect to ship 40M tablets in 2014 and is committed to tablet market share goals, having learned from prior mistakes. As the tablet market quickly bifurcates to high- and low-end, INTC expects profitability will ultimately follow market share progress. Market share appears a strategic goal for INTC in tablets. And perhaps most importantly, 14nm Broadwell production remains on schedule. We like the incremental progress here, but with its yet-to-be-proven wireless strategy and challenging PC economics, we remain sidelined. Maintain Perform.

We met with SWKS on Tuesday and feel even more confident that SWKS is focused on diversifying its revenue stream to additional end markets, and we therefore believe that SWKS is an unlikely bidder for TQNT. We do not believe there is a high probability for SWKS to purchase a company with a focus on mobility, and would instead expect the company to make either a couple small bolt-on acquisitions in Analog, or potentially even take advantage of the very low interest rates to make a larger purchase. We continue to believe that diversifying away from mobile has the potential to re-rate SWKS’ multiple, and we believe the TQNT & RFMD merger is a positive for Skyworks considering the potential for a re-rating of the group given that the remaining 3 major players (AVGO, RFMDnewco, and SWKS) all have OMs in the mid-20s and the possibility of a more benign pricing environment following the consolidation.

He also met with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) management, and writes, “HP had an increased presence at the show with a much larger booth demonstrating its Cloud and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) efforts.”

“HP made a strong case that it is taking a leadership position in virtualization of networks.”

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FEBRUARY 26, 2014 10:20 A.M.

HangLai wrote:

Tiernan Ray of Barron: I generally agree with your analysts on Intel and other company’s perspective, except SWKS, I don’t see RFMD/Triquint merger will benefit SWKS. SWKS appears to have reached its peak in wireless revenue for sometime; that was the reason its management called for diversification from wireless. With RFMD and others coming hard in the wireless, SWKS wireless revenue will not increase substantially from here on. At a $34 share price, far more than Intel’s ( where Intel owns the market in its field, SWKS does not), SWKS is at risk to fall substantially when the wireless revenue is to come down when it loses the market share.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.