Two Separate Small Cell Ecosystems

Looks like the small cell universe is splitting into two distinct ecosystems.

On one hand, we have Picochip and Broadcom, with their respective software stacks and APIs for femtocell vendors to develop consumer small cells. Taiwanese ODMs are jumping into this market because it looks a lot like the PC market or the smartphone game, where there are one or two dominant chipset vendors and an ODM can quickly wrap some plastic around it. In this market, the solution is a best-effort femtocell which can improve coverage in your home. If it doesn't interoperate with the network well (e.g. handoffs), that's ok! The fact is that you bought yourself a femtocell because you didn't have coverage at home.

On the other hand, we have Mindspeed, TI, Freescale, Cavium, DesignArt Networks, and the Tier One mobile infrastructure OEMs, all of whom are more focused on carrier-grade solutions. The silicon and the rest of the hardware will support the same software that runs on macrocell platforms, which allows the carriers to deploy a bunch of small cells with the level of service quality they already understand in a macro network. This ecosystem is NOT focused on coverage in the home. Instead they are focused on the more lucrative target: high capacity mobile networks used by thousands or millions of people instead of a few people at home.