Research and Markets: Chinese Version of the Mobile Handset RF (Radio Frequency)...

Thu May 8, 2008 9:00pm EDT

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Research and Markets: Chinese Version of the Mobile Handset RF (Radio Frequency) IC Industry Report, 2007-2008 Is out Now

DUBLIN, Ireland--(Business Wire)--
Research and Markets
(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c91254) has announced the
addition of "Mobile Handset RF (Radio Frequency) IC Industry Report,
2007-2008" to their offering.

The most critical components of handset radio frequency or RF are
transceivers and power amplifiers or PA. Transceiver manufacturers are
divided into two categories. The producers in the first category rely
on baseband platform and regard transceiver as part of the platform,
such as TI, Qualcomm, NXP, Freescale and MediaTek, because transceiver
and baseband have a close relationship and both often require
collaboration in their design. The producers in the second category
are professional RF manufacturers that do not depend on baseband
platform to expand the transceiver market, including Infineon, ST,
RFMD and SKYWORKS. Among these producers, Infineon and ST all produce
transceivers for Nokia, while Infineon also manufactures 3G-handset
transceivers for Motorola and Sony Ericsson. ST only produces handset
RF products to Nokia and do not sell its handset RF products to other
handset producers, making its transceiver businesses rely completely
on the big customer of Nokia. Therefore, if ST loses the big client of
Nokia, it will have to shut down its transceiver plant. RFMD and
SKYWORKS both have lost interest in transceiver business, the ratio of
transceiver business to their total is low, especially that of RFMD.
From the perspective of the current situation, it will be very hard
for RFMD and SKYWORKS to keep their transceiver business without the
support of mobile phone platform, so they will have to either sell it
or shut it down. SILABS sold its transceiver business to NXP in 2007.
In fact, SILABS transceiver business with LG, Samsung and Amoi as its
loyal clients was excellent. By relying on baseband, MediaTek has
expanded its global market share of transceiver from less than one
percent in 2005 to the current more than 12 percent, ranking the fifth
in the world.

Transceivers are advancing towards integration and multi-mode.
Integration is the requirement of handset manufacturers for decreasing
the cost continuously. The semiconductor manufacturing technique of
transceivers has changed from BiCMOS in early 2000 to the current RF
CMOS. The single-mode transceiver is completely integrated into the
baseband. If handset baseband manufacturers can not make it, they will
easily become disadvantageous in the competition. Infineon and
Broadcom have excellent performance in this aspect. The reason why NXP
acquired the transceiver business of SILABS is to make up for its
shortcoming in this aspect. Multi-mode is a challenge to
manufacturers. In the future, mobile phone producers are most likely
to adopt multimode, such as WCDMA, LET and WIMAX, in their 3G and 4G
mobile phones. Mobile phone producers with poor technological strength
will be driven out of the market.

We believe that manufacturers that are making attempts to make a
foray into the handset transceiver field cannot succeed, because it is
not a field, where emerging producers and small manufacturers can
survive. Although they have the chance to be taken over by big
manufacturers, they will have used up funds of venture capitalists
before being merged.

Power amplifier is an independent field with market entry
threshold. PA, as the most important component of a mobile phone, can
not be integrated. Handset's call quality, signal receiving ability
and battery life are all decided by PA. Generally speaking, once a
handset manufacturer chooses a PA supplier, it is almost not possible
for the manufacture to change the supplier. Many emerging producers
are trying to replace the current PA with GaAs-based PHEMT technique
by one with silicon-based CMOS technology, which is nearly impossible.
No matter how much manufacturers can accept the new technology, CMOS
technology does not have the advantage in cost. Because CMOS
technology is only lower in wafer cost, its total cost is not
advantageous at all. The purchase cost of one 6-inch GaAs wafer is
around US$500, while that of one 8-inch silicon wafer is less than
US$50. However, one 6-inch GaAs wafer can produce 5,000 to 10,000 PA,
so averagely, the cost per chip is not that high as imagined, just a
tiny higher. If the cost of IC packaging & testing and design is
added, the total cost of silicon-based CMOS PA will be surely a lot
higher than that of GaAs-based PHEMT PA. The biggest difference
between GaAs and silicon lies in electron mobility. The speed of GaAs
electron mobility is two to six times of that of silicon, so its
ability of processing high-speed and high-frequency signals is higher,
thus making its performance in a dominant position. The main PA
manufacturers are RFMD, SKYWORKS, RENESAS, NXP, AVAGO, TRIQUINT, and
ANADIGICS.

In 2007, Media Tek shipment in Mainland China decreased, due to
the short supply of PA. The design manual of MediaTek recommended
handset manufacturers to adopt the power amplifiers of Renesas and
RFMD. Consequently, the PA shipment of Renesas increased largely and
its supply could not meet the demand. The PA business of RENESAS
originated from Hitachi and its production capacity has not risen
since then, leading to a 40-percent-gap between supply and demand.
Rises in raw material price and quite limited bargaining power have
made PA producers even operate at a loss in a PA market with short
supply. RFMD is making loss. Therefore, PA price will inevitably rise
in the future.

Nokia mainly entrusts ST and Infineon to manufacture RF
transceivers. Infineon is in charge of the production of high-end and
low-end products, while ST is responsible for the production of
mid-end products. Nokia N-series handsets mainly adopt the
transceivers of Infineon, for example, 6280, N80, N73, N93, and N77
adopts PIHI, while Nokia old products like 6151, 6630, 6680, 6681,
E60, E70, N70, N72, N90 and N91 generally adopt transceivers made of
HINKUV310A and VINKUV314A. Nokia in its early products, such 2 series
products as 2600, 6060, 6600 and 6030 adopted PMB3347, PMB3258,
PMB3358 and PMB3346 of Infineon respectively. ST mainly provides Nokia
with transceivers for medium- and low-end products, HELGO in its early
products, and ANHEU later. In most of its 5 series, 6 series, 7 series
and 8 series handsets, Nokia adopt transceivers of ST. Among its new
products like N76, N82 and N95, Nokia adopts the transceivers of ST.
Regarding PA, Nokia basically adopts the products of RFMD and only
uses a few power amplifiers from SKYWORKS as a supplement.

Motorola mainly uses RF transceivers from Freescale and only a few
products from RFMD, which still makes Motorola the biggest client of
RFMD RF transceivers. Motorola mainly adopts power amplifiers from
RFMD, but in its early handsets, the power amplifiers were supplied by
Freescale. Power amplifiers in low-end Motorola W-series handsets are
supplied by SKYWORKS.

Sony Ericsson handsets' basebands are quite simple. 90 percent of
its basebands are supplied by TI. About RF, it only adopts SKYWORKS
power amplifiers. Transceivers in its early products were developed
itself by Ericsson and later it designated NXP to manufacture
transceivers.

Samsung adopts RF transceivers from Qualcomm in its CDMA handsets
and use RF transceivers from NXP in its GSM handsets. In its early
products, Samsung used a few RF transceivers from RENESAS. As for PA,
dual-mode CDMA power amplifiers of Samsung are WS1102 of AVAGO.
Samsung E-series products often adopt SKYWORKS power amplifiers, and
its GSM handsets mostly adopt power amplifiers of TRIQUINT and RFMD,
while its CDMA products mostly adopt ANADIGICS power amplifiers.

In its GSM handsets, LG mostly adopts power amplifiers of
SKYWORKS, followed by that of RFMD and mostly adopts transceivers from
NXP. In its CDMA handsets, LG adopts transceivers from Qualcomm and
power amplifiers from SKYWORKS and TRIQUINT.

In their CDMA and WCDMA handsets, big manufacturers, including
Huawei and ZTE, prefer to adopt ANADIGICS power amplifiers.

Contents

- Background of China Handset RF Industry

- Basic Knowledge of RF Semiconductor

- Overview of Global Handset RF Semiconductor Market

- Global Handset RF Semiconductor Manufacturers

Companies Mentioned:

- Nokia

- Motorola

- Sony Ericsson

- Samsung

- LG