Motorola to double R&D spend in LTE and support China Mobile trials

Motorola’s networks division has stepped up to clarify its position on next generation technologies, following comments by co-CEO Greg Brown, which implied the firm was cutting back on R&D in 4G technologies. In fact, says Fred Wright, senior VP with responsibility for WiMAX and cellular networks, Motorola will double its spending on LTE developments this year and has a new trial starting with China Mobile, for the TDD variant of the platform.

At Motorola’s recent Q1 results call with analysts, Brown said 4G R&D was being adapted to be “more reflective of the market” and this would include “moderating our investment in WiMAX to reflect current market conditions”. Wright clarifies, saying R&D spend for LTE this year will be twice that of 2008, and the total spent on LTE plus WiMAX will increase, but the WiMAX sum will be lower.

Wright clarifies that the “moderation” in WiMAX is not the result of a pullback, but of the platform now being stable and fully commercially available, so that the big wave of R&D spend, to bring products to market, is over, and further developments are for incremental features, and enhancements such as extended range.

By contrast, LTE is on the crest of the R&D wave and given that Motorola has no significant presence in W-CDMA, it is under pressure to steal a technological march in LTE. One of the areas where it can do this is in TD-LTE, where the TDD expertise gained from WiMAX should give it a headstart on Ericsson. The Swedish leader may have been working hard on TDD implementations for China in the labs, but having bypassed WiMAX, it lacks real world TDD experience.

Motorola took part in the joint Vodafone/Verizon LTE trial in Budapest, Hungary, and though it did not win a share of the Verizon contract, it is now converting that trial to TD-LTE for China Mobile. It has already been working on this platform with the Chinese cellco in Illinois, but will now move to full field trials and later extend these to China itself. Of course, the performance of Motorola in both FDD and TDD systems can still feed into Vodafone’s decision process when it moves towards LTE, and Voda also has TDD spectrum in some areas - while all three giant partners are calling for dual support for TDD and FDD in all LTE devices from day one.

This renewed focus on TDD, reinforced by many operators’ demands for increased TDD spectrum allocations to facilitate data intensive services, should be a strong card for Motorola to play. Wright said: “We got high marks from China Mobile, partly because of our expertise from WiMAX in terms of elegant design and in schedulers and the other exotic software needed for TDD, as opposed to FDD. Ericsson has no real experience in TDD or WiMAX.”

Like Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola sees two distinct markets evolving for WiMAX and LTE, with different types of carriers opting for each system. WiMAX operators like Clearwire or UQ may be affiliates of telcos or cellcos, but they have different business models geared around broadband data and not necessarily high mobility.