Good news, you can now make free international calls via mobile phone. Skype has moved from the PC arena to mobile arena. Partnering with 3, a mobile media company, it has launched the long-rumoured Skype mobile phone on the 2nd Nov in UK. The new phone, officially labeled as 3 Skypephone, enables users to make free Skype to Skype calls, as well as send free Skype instant messages via the VoIP service. The 3 Skypephone will be available this year in the UK, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau and Sweden.

What is relatively unknown to most people is that the 3 Skypephone is powered by the Qualcomm’s BREW technology. Qualcomm’s BREW platform is a powerful technology that not only integrates Skype with all other aspects of a mobile phone, it also allow developers to develop innovative applications and services on the mobile phone such as 3D games.

The following video is an introduction to 3 Skypephone.

TI and STMicro have announced plans to stop internal technology development at 45nm and use foundry supplied processes at 32nm and below (read more on TI news and STMicro news). It does not necessarily mean that both IDMs will go fabless, but they claim that they would employ the foundry technology as a starting platform to develop valued-added derivatives in their own fabs. There are certainly compelling motivations behind this new strategic initiative:

• In term of leading edge logic technology, leading foundries like TSMC, UMC and Chartered have more or less catch up with the leading IDMs. Therefore, the differentiating advantages for IDMs to own their process and manufacturing technology is starting to erode very fast.
• The R&D cost of developing leading edge process technology is escalating exponentially for 45nm technology and below. A number of companies, both IDM and foundries, are now relying on alliance to reduce R&D cost and risk. However, with various partners (NXP and Freescale) exiting from the Crolles2 alliance, STMicro will find it difficult to finance the 32nm technology development.
• TI has successfully pursued a multiple foundry strategy for manufacturing outsourcing. The multiple foundry strategy is effective to hedge the outsourcing risk, reduce operational cost and increase bargaining power with foundries. To date, TI have qualified TSMC, UMC, SMIC, and now Chartered Semiconductor for manufacturing outsourcing.
• IDMs are facing increasing pressure to compete with Fabless Design Houses or Integrated Fabless Manufacturers (IFM), such as Broadcom, Xilinx, Altera and Qualcomm, which focus on SoC design and leave foundries to drive process technology development. To improve their ROI, IDMs are betting more on derivative/differentiating process development, like RF and analog, in their own Fabs.

TI has also announced that they would close down its 8″ k-fab in Dallas. Most likely its 12″ r-fab at Richardson will be the last leading-edge Fab built by TI. Will we see more IDMs follow TI and STMicro’s footsteps? Let’s see.