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.

Where is Sigma selling all these HPNA chips?

During Sigma Design's 2015Q3 Earnings Call, CEO Thinh Tran, said that Sigma's home networking products revenue for the quarter was 23M USD and HPNA chips account for more of than 18.4M USD.

Guessing 6 USD a chip, an high estimate, says they are selling 3M HPNA chips a quarter. With AT&T adding 600K new subscribers per quarter, where in the hell are the other 1.8M HPNA chips going? Surely AT&T is not buying 5 HPNA chips per subscriber, no?

Even more of a mystery is where are Sigma's 700K HomePlug chips going? Given Sigma's much more expensive BOM for their CG2210 chip, surely nobody would be buying the CG2210 over QCA or BRCM chips. Mystery.

Quotes from the 2015Q3 Earnings Call.

In home networking, our home networking business contributed 23 million in revenue this quarter, an increase of 5.2 million over our previous quarter as a result of sequential increase in HomePNA and HomePlug deployment. The future Home Video Networking market is being driven by the need to bring video service to multiple set-top boxes or television in the home and ensure that reliable connections of 4K TV, is more self installation and lower overall operator cost. As the only standard that enables all wire connectivity, G.hn has been getting additional momentum in the worldwide service provider space based on reliable bandwidth it offers, the self installability and a fit as a complement to wireless solutions being used by many providers.

We have been heavily engaged with the market as our sales force continues its aggressive effort to gain adoption via G.hn solution with specific focus on service providers in North America and China. Now established HomePNA product and customers continue to account for over 80% of our product line revenue, which has recently shown new growth. We believe our home networking product line revenue may fluctuate throughout the next few quarters.

CURRENT, Back to the Future with $13M in New Money

After burning $100M from Google, Goldman Sachs and Hearst and then  vaporizing $130M from General Electric, TXU and Sensus Metering Systems, CURRENT announced in a press release a pittance of $13M of new money to make disappear. This time, in addition to existing U.S. investors Associated Partners, EnerTech Capital and Goldman Sachs, CURRENT decided to terrorize the rest-of-the-world snagging  investor Business Media China, and Portuguese investor Espírito Santo Ventures.

CURRENT is pivoting (management speak for "ah shit it is not working let's try something else") from broadband-over-powerlines (BPL) to smart grid to overseas, since BPL for Internet Access networks did not work out so well for them in the USA.

HanFan wishes CURRENT luck and hopes they got their burn rate down from the milk-and-honey days from Google and GE.

UPA and G.hn Promoter DS2 in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Procedure

DS2, one of two chipmakers who have announced plans for G.hn chips has entered the Spanish equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy procedure.

Clearly, DS2 is a good candidate to be purchased with a reported $20 million in sales in 2008. But with a rumoured $30M in debt, it will be a challenge to find the right buyer.

DS2 has previously promised G.hn chips for Q3 2010. Assuming DS2 did not spend IBM's loan of $2M on launching the chip, it is hard to imagine a bankruptcy judge approving this investment while DS2 is in chapter 11 bankruptcy procedure.