Ericsson is still holding out on the femtocell market.
In an interview with Light Reading, Ericsson's vice president and head of radio products, Ulf Ewaldsson, said that WiFi has already won out as the solution for providing wireless data in the home, leaving 3G femtocells with a voice-only solution. Still, Ewaldsson isn't ruling out the vendor's entrance into the femtocell market when the price of these mini base stations falls to the same level as WiFi access points.
"Ericsson has no issue with femtocells," said Ewaldsson. "There is nothing that will stop the company from taking that market with the best product the market has ever seen... If we wanted to do a femtocell, we could go to market in three months. But we have to do things that make sense."
Ewaldsson said the company would rather work with partners to develop and manufacture femtocells, with Ericsson playing the role of providing the chipset module to power the device. "Very few consumer manufacturers have jumped on to the femtocell train. Why? Economics," he said.
The company manufactured a 2G femtocell in 2007 as part of a home gateway that included a WiFi access point and DSL modem, but little is known about the success of the product.
For more:
- read this Light Reading article
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