On April 30, 2013, Avago Technologies Limited announced that it had acquired Javelin Semiconductor for an undisclosed sum.  Javelin (Austin, TX) supplies 3G CMOS PAs for the Samsung Galaxy S Duos, Samsung Galaxy Appeal and Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus.  The COO of Avago Tech stated that the company would develop hybrid CMOS / GaAs modules for cellphones, also making use of Avago’s compact FBAR filters and duplexers.

The acquisition follows Qualcomm’s announcement of a line of CMOS-based multimode, multiband power amplifiers, the acquisition of CMOS PA start-up Amalfi by RF Micro Devices, and the previous acquisition of Axiom Microdevices by Skyworks in 2009.  A few weeks ago, Peregrine Semiconductor announced a partnership to develop CMOS silicon-on-sapphire PAs with Murata for potential use in front-end cellphone modules.

The acquisition leaves TriQuint as the only top-tier GaAs PA supplier with no apparent CMOS PA capability.  The two best-known remaining acquisition candidates with CMOS PA technology are Black Sand (Austin, TX) and ACCO Semiconductor (Sunnyvale CA).  Black Sand has been the most outspoken of the two, claiming that its PAs have better inherent performance tolerance to VSWR mismatch than GaAs-based 3G PAs.  ACCO Semi, on the other hand, has maintained a relatively low profile.  ACCO Semi also specializes in CMOS PAs for 3G.  Neither company has shipped substantial volumes yet to the best of our knowledge.

We believe that TriQuint is taking a hard and close look at both Black Sand and ACCO Semi.  TriQuint’s competitors are probably also looking at Black Sand and ACCO, hoping to block TriQuint from developing CMOS PAs.

Qualcomm’s new “RF360” family of RF front-end cellphones products includes multiband, multimode CMOS power amplifiers capable of transmitting LTE signals as well as 3G and GGE, previously the exclusive domain of GaAs-based PAs.  Shipments of GaAs-based multimode, multiband PAs (MM-PAs) have grown rapidly over the past three years primarily in smartphones with more than four linear (3G / 4G) bands, for example in the Apple iPhone 4S.  The announcement can be construed as a direct challenge to the GaAs industry, which relies on cellular PAs for over half of its GaAs product revenues.

Qualcomm has entered the market for MM-PAs by drawing on the benefits of envelope tracking (ET), a new technology that improves PA efficiency.  ET, whether used in conjunction with CMOS or GaAs PAs, is expected to ship in cellphones in volumes within the next 12 months, and its viability will prove crucial to the success of CMOS PAs, which last year accounted for less than 10 percent of the cellular PA market in unit terms.

As most silicon-based semiconductor veterans say, “If it can be done in CMOS, eventually it will” to paraphrase the common sentiment.  To back this up, some will recall the rapid ouster of GaAs from radio transceivers in CDMA phones a decade ago, or the quick transition from GaAs p-HEMT to CMOS SoI in RF switches in mobile phones now well underway.  However, GaAs-based PAs are extraordinarily linear and efficient, and GaAs PA suppliers have driven costs down for more than a decade, producing more than 3 billion PAs in 2012 alone.  In addition, the top GaAs-based PA suppliers offer complete front-end solutions that include small-footprint PA-switches, PA-duplexers, switch-filter modules and duplexer-switch modules.

The leading GaAs PA suppliers Skyworks, RFMD, TriQuint, Avago Tech and Murata have not hit the panic button over CMOS.  In comparison to GaAs, CMOS MM-PAs with ET are new and unproven, and far from optimum, as pointed out by early performance results gleaned from OEMs sampling Qualcomm’s first CMOS PAs.  Today, GaAs PAs still beat CMOS in terms of linearity-efficiency, even with ET, and it will probably take Qualcomm and other CMOS PA suppliers several years to improve the technology and gain unqualified acceptance by OEMs, who are extraordinarily conservative with new technologies, even those from major players such as Qualcomm.

This does not mean the death of GaAs, but the Qualcomm announcement undoubtedly signals faster acceptance of CMOS PAs.  To stay competitive, GaAs PA suppliers will have to continue to innovate, and they may also need to offer their own CMOS PAs for the most cost-sensitive phones, as Skyworks and RFMD have already done.

For more about this topic, Eric Higham, Director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductor market research service will host a panel discussion at the upcoming IEEE International Microwave Symposium titled “Death of GaAs?”  You are welcome to attend.  This will be held Thursday, June 6^th from 12:00 – 1:20 PM in Seattle, WA (room location TBD).

 You can also read more in-depth analyses if you are a Strategy Analytics RF & Wireless Components subscriber in the following new reports, or contact Christopher Taylor at ctaylor@strategyanalytics.com with questions:

Qualcomm Challenges GaAs PA Suppliers with CMOS PAs and Complete Front-end Subsystems, March 2013.

PA Market in Flux: CMOS PAs and Envelope Tracking Emerge as Major Themes at MWC 2013, March 2013.

Several popular smartphones shipped in 2011 with compact, integrated antenna tuners, the first of a wave of such tuners from Peregrine Semi, RFMD and others. We have been looking into the outlook for active antennas & tunable components in cellular phones by comparing the different suppliers and technical approaches and we are now convinced of an upbeat forecast of the market through 2017.

Mobile devices that support 4G, 3G and 2G in multiple bands have complex RF front-ends, with compromises in antenna performance that can degrade calls, as Apple learned last year. Tunable components can reduce dropped calls and improve battery life, while simplifying the cellphone.

Significant new strategic avenues open for radio component vendors

Antennas with tunable impedance matching will bring success to some new entrants such as WiSpry and inevitably shake up the existing order among cellphone RF front-end component vendors.

The new ‘antenna tuner’ product category will emerge as an important piece of the cell phone RF front-end, and we expect antenna specialists including Ethertronics and Skycross, in combination with front-end component suppliers including Skyworks, RFMD, Avago Tech, TriQuint and Murata, to compete aggressively in this segment using GaAs, CMOS, RF MEMS and voltage-dependent dielectric variable capacitor technologies.

Stephen Entwistle

Client reading: The Strategy Analytics report, “Outlook for Active Antennas & Tunable Components in Cellular Phones” reviews the prospects for tunable RF components, comparing the different approaches and suppliers, and provides an upbeat forecast of the market through 2017.

On 27 July, 2012, Intel announced the SMARTi UE2p, the first commercial cellular transceiver with on-chip PAs. 

Intel has confirmed that the SMARTi UE2p integrates two full-power 3G PAs on chip with the transceiver, monolithically in 65 nm CMOS, along with PA power control.  This allows the transceiver to cover PA duties for two common W-CDMA bands, for example one high / low band combination such as B1 (1920 MHz – 1980 MHz) and B8 (880 MHz – 915 MHz) for devices sold in Europe, with no need for external PAs.  A mobile device using the SMARTi UE2p requires only two duplexers and an antenna switch in the front end.  If installed on a PCB with two high-quality duplexers, SMARTi UE2p could, we think, use co-banding to eliminate the RF switch completely and still cover quad-GPRS and dual-band W-CDMA.

Our interpretation is that this product will find its way into very low-cost handsets, posing a threat to external GaAs PA suppliers, but especially to low-cost CMOS PA suppliers such as Javelin and Black Sand.  The SMARTi UE2p could also end up in appliances such as internet-connected toaster ovens in the M2M sector, where we will have IP connected devices that are stationary and plugged into wall outlets.  For such devices, power added efficiency and other PA performance parameters are not as much off a concern as in battery operated devices such as handsets.

It will be interesting to see the technical specs for the SMARTi UE2p, especially the RF output and PAE.  This first-of-its-kind product increases the addressable market for Intel at the expense of external PA suppliers, potentially changing the game for both chipset and PA suppliers, especially in the lowest-cost segments of the cellular terminal market.

Christopher Taylor

RF & wireless component suppliers announced a blizzard of new products in Q1 ’12, many coming out during two of the largest industry trade shows, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Mobile World Congress (MWC).  Many of the announcements involved radio components for LTE and 802.11ac, the two standards that will drive the wireless industry over the next five years.

Something else happened in Q1 ’12: publicly traded companies reported a decline of sales of RF and wireless components of approximately 3 percent, corresponding with lower seasonal shipments of cellphones and slower growth in Asia and Europe.  At the same time, the median profitability of the companies declined from a healthy 12 percent profit-to-sales ratio to a weaker 5.3 percent sequentially.

This could mark the start of the second dip of a global double-dip recession.  With Greece on the ropes and the European debt crisis still unresolved, this scenario has many people concerned.  However, the RF and wireless components industry has remained remarkably buoyant throughout the past few years of financial turmoil, with sales at or near historical highs for most companies in the industry in 2011.

Results reported during the second quarter of 2012 so far suggest a modest improvement in demand for Q1 ’12 over the previous quarter.  This is consistent with single-digit annual sales growth for 2012 over 2011, and would seem to indicate slower growth, but not a contraction this year.

For more about RF & wireless component developments in Q1 ’12, see RF Industry Component Review: January – March 2012.

Chris Taylor

We're sure you'd like to know about two key GaN sessions featuring Strategy Analytics and industry leaders at MTT-S Montreal, Canada in June.

Firstly, don't miss the opportunity to meet with Strategy Analytics on the show floor to hear how GaN is becoming a pivotal technology in the Defense Sector.

We'll be presenting on Tuesday 19th June at 10 a.m. to kick off a series of Richardson RFPD Supplier Presentations and you can get the full schedule by clicking here.

Secondly, on Wednesday 20th, we're partnering with Microwave Journal to invite you to a special business-focused session entitled

'Where are the emerging market opportunities for GaN?'

Following our complimentary breakfast at 8 a.m. (room 516 at the Palais des Congres), this key question will be addressed by a market overview presentation from the Strategy Analytics team.

The Strategy Analytics opening forms the basis for business viewpoints presented by RFMD, TriQuint, Cree, NXP, Nitronex and UMS after which the industry panel will invite your questions.

If you're going to be at MTT-S IMS in Montreal (17th - 22nd June), then from a business viewpoint, you should see these two sessions as a must to get new insights in the future of GaN.

Steve Entwistle

Ref: E61

Opinions vary on whether ST-Ericsson can survive in its present form, but the latest financial results are not encouraging.

In the company’s Q1 ’12 ending March 31, 2012, ST-Ericsson generated $290 million in revenue, down 29 percent from $409 million in the previous quarter.  Net income (loss) for Q1 ’12 was a staggering ($312) million, or more than 100 percent of sales.

The company’s latest turn-around efforts include staff reductions, facility closings, scaling back R&D, and outsourcing more activities to STMicroelectronics.  ST-Ericsson has also scaled back its ambitions in cellular chips, narrowing its focus to mid-tier smartphones.  The downside of this product focus is that ST-Ericsson is pitting itself mainly against Qualcomm and Intel.

You can see the players quarterly market share in these reports for basebands and apps processors.

In addition, the company has decided to gamble on CMOS on fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SoI) for future products.  We do not doubt the future of FD-SoI, but have some questions as to whether ST-Ericsson can successfully use the technology to get ahead of its competitors, all of whom have their own process expertise and deep pockets for funding R&D.

Some of the biggest challenges facing the company, as noted by its new CEO Didier Lamouche over the past three months:

• ST-Ericsson’s sales dropped to 30 percent of 2009 revenue in 2011, and appear headed for another 30 percent drop in 2012.  ST-Ericsson’s main customers lost market share in 2011, among these Nokia and Sony-Ericsson, accounting for much of ST-Ericsson’s loss of sales;
• Not coincidentally, smartphones using the Symbian OS lost share from roughly 40 percent of the smartphone market a few years ago to 12 percent of the market in 2011, replaced by Android (~51 percent) and Apple (~24 percent).  At the start of 2011, ST-Ericsson had no products to support these operating systems, nor did it have products supporting the Windows Mobile 7 OS now used in Nokia’s newest smartphones;
• ST-Ericsson consisted of three merged companies with 44 facilities at the start of 2012; managing these requires inculcating a culture that values customers and fast time to market in addition to technology, according to CEO Lamouche;
• In its haste to rationalize three overlapping product portfolios, ST-Ericsson did not protect its legacy 2G, 2.5G and 3G products adequately, suffering a rather precipitous drop in sales in 2011.

Mr. Lamouche has made several moves to improve ST-Ericsson’s profitability and get it growing:

• The company will concentrate on the high-growth smartphone segment, and within this segment will concentrate on support for mid-level smartphones, giving up support for low-end and premium smartphones as well as chips for feature phones and entry-level phones.  This will pit ST-Ericsson directly against Qualcomm and probably Intel in the future:
  • ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor U8500 and future evolutions of this baseband-applications processor such as the U8520 and L8540 (multimode with LTE) represent some of the only alternatives to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon baseband-applications processors so far:
  • New phones using the NovaThor U8500 include the Sony Xperia P and U, the Samsung Galaxy S Advanced, the HTC sensation Z710t, the Via U8500 and the Ontim WP8500 tablet;
• The company recently made further staffing and facility cuts to lower costs, among these moves to reduce SG&A by 25 percent through layoffs and attrition among top managers.  These moves should reduce costs by $320 million per year by the end of ’13 according to the CEO;
• The company will move its applications processor development and staff to STMicroelectronics, which will license products and technology back to ST-Ericsson.

The license agreement with ST-Micro covers the application processor development portion of ST-Ericsson’s future baseband-apps processors (“ModAp platforms”) as well as stand-alone applications processors for high-end smartphones and tablets.  Under the agreement, both companies will jointly promote and offer stand-alone applications processors slim modems.  The two companies will share in the development of ST-Ericsson’s previously announced A9540 and A9600 applications processors, in tandem with new M74xx slim modems for LTE, due to sample later this year.

In an effort to leapfrog its competitors, ST-Ericsson will develop future baseband-apps processors using fully-depleted silicon on insulator substrates (FD-SoI) at 28 nm:

• Processors built using 28 nm FD-SoI can run at 2.5 GHz clock rates with 0.6 volt supply voltage, attaining double the computational performance of similar chips built on standard high-resistivity silicon substrates;
• These chips will have 35 percent lower power consumption than similar non-SoI versions, equivalent to four hours more high-speed browsing, 2.5 hours more video streaming, or 2 hours more video uploading using a standard smartphone battery;
• ST-Ericsson will use substrates from Soitec, fabricated into chips by STMicroelectronics, which has leading-edge CMOS expertise at its Crolles fab and through membership in the IBM Semiconductor Development Alliance;
• According to Mr. Lamouche, FD-SoI will put ST-Ericsson ahead of Intel’s ‘trigate’ process, expected to reach the market in 2012 at 22 nm in Intel’s Ivy Bridge chipset for PCs:
  • Intel is widely expected to combine FD-SoI with its trigate transistors, but probably not until the 11 nm process node in 2014 or beyond.  So far, Intel has publicly stated that it has no plans to use partiall-depleted SoI, and no need to use FD-SoI at the moment;
  • Published research suggests that the STMicroelectronics will probably use its UTB (ultra-thin body) transistor process with FD-SoI for fabricating ST-Ericsson’s cellphone processors, probably an interim step to FinFETS roughly equivalent to Intel’s trigate transistors.

ST-Ericsson’s Jörgen Lantto, former Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Strategy, noted in February at MWC that Intel’s Mobile Communications business unit will spend whatever is necessary to succeed in mobile devices, but that Intel’s corporate cost structure in the traditional PC microprocessor side of the business is not in tune with relatively low-margin chipsets for mobile devices, which may lead to some interesting adjustments at Intel in the future.

Perhaps true, but what ever transpires at Intel, ST-Ericsson will still face an uphill battle against well-entrenched competition.

For information on ST-Ericsson's Strategy and product roadmap, see Apps Processor Profile: ST-Ericsson's U8500.

For information on ST-Ericsson's recently announced products and related developments at Mobile World Congress 2012, see Cellular Radio Chip Developments at MWC 2012.

Christopher Taylor

Many leading suppliers use PriceTRAX to track and compare smartphones, mobile phones, tablets and dongles across 100 carriers in 31 countries.  Weekly updates to both Pre-paid and Post-paid retail and operator pricing are presented in a comprehensive and easy-to-use web interface.

You are invited to attend our exclusive analysis breakfast presentations at MWC where you can try out PriceTRAX. If you would like to register for this breakfast event click HERE-->>

The PriceTRAX demonstration will show its ease of use and efficiency in answering questions such as:

·         Have any of our competitors’ prices changed this week?

·         Are we losing margin through unnecessarily low price points?

·         What are the most popular market entry price points?

·         How does tablet pricing compare across network operators?

If you feel that someone in your company or a colleague within the industry may benefit from a demonstration please feel free to forward this announcement to them.

If you would like to register for this breakfast event click HERE-->>

Stephen Entwistle

Follow me on twitter.com/sentwistle1419