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.

25 million HomePlug powerline products sold in 2015

25 million HomePlug powerline products sold in 2015.

Now where is that press release from HomeGrid for G.hn or is the momentum still building.

HomeGrid members eat their own on coax

After failing in the PLC market, Marvell is looking to cannibalism HomeGrid founding member Sigma Design's HPNA product on baseband coax--looking at your AT&T.

HomeGrid's press release announces Marvell's new pre-standard G.hn solution on coax with a channel bandwidth of 200MHz double the current standard of 100MHz.

http://homegridforum.typepad.com/homegrid_forum/2015/08/ghn-200-mhz-coax-networking-now-set-to-match-carriers-10g-pon-deployments.html#more

Operator Fail--HomeGrid announces G.hn products available on Chinese equivalent of Amazon and eBay

After years of promising that G.hn would win the operators over in China, HomeGrid has proudly announced G.hn products are available on, from HomeGrid's blog post, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon and eBay.

It is going to be a very long ramp up for G.hn without the market education provided by operators or brick-and-mortar retail stores.

How the mighty have fallen-or some such. I think I will take some green-tea and watch the rain for awhile.

Home Networking: HomePlug AV2 Outperforms G.hn

Or at least That is what The Online Reporter is saying:

http://www.onlinereporter.com/2015/07/06/home-networking-homeplug-av2-outperforms-g-hn/

G.hn Momentum Builds at CES with Live Demos and New Member Announcements

http://www.homegridforum.org/content/pages.php?pg=news_press_releases_item&id=279
http://www.lightreading.com/broadband/networked-home/will-2014-be-ghns-year/d/d-id/707360?f_src=lightreading_gnews

HomeGrid moves Certification lab to Taiwan

HomeGrid Forum has quietly replaced UK based TRaC Global with ALLION Labs, based in Taiwan, as HomeGrid sole "Accredited Test House".

The writing has been on the wall for TRaC Global exiting HomeGrid ever since HomeGrid's 12 August 2014 press release announcing that HomeGrid Forum Appoints Allion Labs as first Asian Accredited Test House.

Given HomeGrid's complete lack of any wins, retail or telco, in Europe or North America, it is not surprising that HomeGrid now focuses on the green field market in China.

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.

2014 The year of G.hn

Eternal opptimums

SmartThings and IOT and SmartHome and HomeAutomation and WTF!

Too many buzz words. Not enough buzz.

• Is Nest smart enough to manage electric heating? Nest asks, WTF is electric heating!
• Wireless deadbolts; are they alive enough to open a sticky door? Nope!
• Are z-wave&ZigBee enough? Not if you are on a budget and have a normal house.
• Can any of these buzz words really save me $$$$$$$? Not yet!
• Can any of these buzz words make my life better? No often!
• BEEP!  BEEP!  BEEP! Somebody is not or is doing something or nothing!!!  

We need smarter and more reliable home automation to handle real-life.

SmartThings is a good start at the integration. But takes way too much thinking for us moms and pops. Like all of the competitors, requires way too much interaction and thinking on the consumer.

Killer apps? Heating/cooling mayby; if Nest ever figures out one temperature reading for an entire house is not enough or that not everybody had central heating.

Save money on lighting--not if you are using LED lights!

Security? Surely not. Get an SMS that your house has be broken into, call the police, only to find out your daughter has come home from college. Integration with Google Now would help, but the police will be bummed when she comes home unexpectedly early from college.