Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Marvell exits G.hn/HomeGrid Powerline Communication Business and sells unit at a loss to MaxLinear

According to the press release, MaxLinear is paying $21M for Marvell’s G.hn business. This is a huge loss for Marvell.  Just compare the rumored €25M Marvell paid to acquire DS2's assets in Aug-2010 and the massive investment (two G.hn chips "wave 1" and recently release "wave 2") Marvell made. The press release says that the Marvell G.hn business being acquired has “nascent revenues” in the “low single-digital millions of dollars’.

HANFAN guesses that the Marvell's G.hn revenue is below $3M per year.

MaxLinear already has a MoCA and DOCSIS solutions over coax. The CEO, Kishore Seendripu, sees “G.hn is truly complementary to MoCA” so is discounting G.hn's any wire technology.

MaxLinear seems to be targeting Marvell's G.hn solution to complete with xDSL as is done already in Korea. The CEO said, it will allow MaxLinear to sell the G.hn product to telcos that are deploying xDSL, G.fast or fiber largely outside North America.

HANFAN concludes MaxLinear will not use G.hn on coax.

HANFAN estimates that there is around 30 Marvell staff making the move to MaxLinear.

Best of luck ex-DS2ers and ex-Marvellers with MaxLinear--at least they want continue to try.