The phrase “disruption”—short for disruptive innovation—was coined by the late Clayton M. Christensen in 1995. the thought became so popular and overused that he wrote a second piece in 2015 to clarify it again*. Do read it. “Disruption” describes a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is in a position to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. Specifically, as incumbents target improving their products and services for his or her most demanding (and usually most profitable) customers, they exceed the wants of some segments and ignore the requirements of others. Entrants that prove disruptive begin by successfully targeting those overlooked segments, gaining a footing by delivering more-suitable functionality—frequently at a lower cost. A smaller company with fewer resources…is ready to challenge established incumbents by delivering more-suitable functionality at a lower cost. I don’t know if A. Govindswamy, the 53-year-old founding father of MBit Wireless, sees the planet like that. But it's how a telecom professional from Sheela Shelar’s newsletter today sees the marketplace for wireless chipsets that come in billions of smartphones and intelligent devices. A market dominated global by two companies—US-based Qualcomm and Taiwan's MediaTek. “Companies like Qualcomm work very high margins—60% or thereabouts. And Wall Street loves such companies—high margins beget high market capitalization. Why wouldn't it have an interest in selling chipsets for low-end phones?” That’s precisely the market MBit wants to travel after. It's why it's been filing patents, building chipsets, and signing up customers for a period that's unheard of—10 years. Today, MBit has two commercially ready chips which will enable 4G low-end smartphones and 5G IoT. With its design base in India, it's tested its chips in four regions -
India, US, Japan, and Korea. within the field, says the corporate, its 4G solution is on par with the Qualcomm solution and has demonstrated similar performance.
The company has shipped a million chips, but Govindswamy says this can be just a teaser. “When we hit 50 million, likely in two years from now, is once we will come up for air and speak about our company more freely.”
The world of wireless chipsets is brutal. It’s where even giants like Intel, NXP, Texas Instruments, etc., have failed. What chance does MBit have? Is it bringing a knife to a gunfight? Or does it know something others don’t?