Looking at the proposed joint venture between European wireless chipmaker STMicroelectronics and equipment maker Ericsson this morning, all you need to know is that making wireless chips is no longer enough. The emphasis is shifting beyond the individual radios on a chip, to a platform that contain as much of the silicon-related radios as a phone or laptop needs, packaged neatly for consumption in a handset or on a 3G modem. It’s the difference between buying the individual tomatoes, onions and basil for a pasta sauce or a jar of the stuff. Today’s OEMs want jars.

Ericsson will contribute $1.1 billion to the proposed joint venture as well as its platform technology used in cell phones and modems. STMicro will fund the venture with $1.2 billion in assets. Also in today’s announcement, STMicro said it would buy out the remaining 20 percent stake it holds in its recent joint venture with NXP. The earlier joint venture threatened the top two wireless chip makers Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, while this deal represents more direct competition with Qualcomm’s Gobi platform.

The trend towards integrating multiple radios onto a single platform ties to increasing wireless broadband adoption and more networks from EDGE to LTE. As smartphones become more common for housewives and teenagers their prices and their time-to-market need to shrink. Integrated radio platforms help make this possible, because it requires less pre-certification of radios on a specific network and to a particular device. The same trend is evident in 3G modems, which even moms are using nowadays. We’re also buying our pasta sauce in jars.

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