Texas Instruments Chief Financial Officer Kevin March expects to see continued consolidation among wireless chip makers, reflecting the need among smaller competitors to scale their businesses to lower costs.

Speaking at the Citi Technology Conference in New York on Wednesday, March said there will be fewer, larger chip makers in the years to come. He also said that greater focus will be placed on the applications processor chip as more consumers upgrade their current mobile devices to smartphones.

According to March, phone makers will continue to prefer separate baseband and application processors to create customized products, as opposed to a single, integrated baseband and application chip, in order to better differentiate their phones from competitors.

"A preponderance of customers" want custom solutions "to provide greater differentiation," March said.

Source:Dow Jones