The GaAs device industry has posted eight consecutive years of growth and it closed 2012 with revenues of slightly more than $5.3 billion. This expansion began in 2004, and GaAs device revenue has more than doubled since then. That this expansion occurred with the commercial wireless communications era is no coincidence. The GaAs device industry has benefitted enormously from rapid growth in mobile handset adoption as power amplifiers and switches have formed the RF backbone in increasingly sophisticated mobile phone designs. As wireless standards evolve to HSPA+ and LTE and countries designate new frequency bands to satisfy the insatiable desire for data consumption, the RF content in the front-end of handsets increases. Strategy Analytics estimates that the combination of increasing mobile device shipments, coupled with a trend of higher GaAs dollar content per device drove this segment to more than 55 percent of total GaAs device revenue in 2012. With handset shipment increases forecast in 2013 and smartphones continuing to capture market share, it would seem GaAs device revenue is poised for continued long-term growth, but recent announcements signal a threat.
Just prior to Mobile World Congress in late February, Qualcomm officially launched its RF360 family of CMOS-based front-end products, consisting of multimode, multiband PAs, envelope tracking (ET) power management ICs, antenna tuners and modular packaging for PAs, switches and filters. Qualcomm’s pre-conference announcement shook investors on Wall Street as most GaAs PA manufacturers saw their stocks drop significantly after the announcement. In addition to the investors, the announcement also prompted power amplifier suppliers and envelope tracking (ET) specialists to release a flurry of competitive counter-announcements, with no fewer than 10 companies releasing new details at MWC about how they will support LTE devices with multimode, multiband PAs (MM-PA) and ET.
Qualcomm announced that it developed this family of handset RF front-end component solutions to address the problem of band fragmentation, a barrier to the success of its LTE chipsets. With the company occupying a dominant position as an LTE chipset supplier, they have a large stake in enabling the anticipated fast growth of the LTE mobile device market. The solution introduces several innovations to the PA market. While lower tier GGE handsets have increasingly used CMOS PAs over the past two years, this is the first commercial multimode, multiband PA fabricated in CMOS. It is also the first PA to include monolithic on-chip distribution and antenna switches, as well as the first production CMOS PA designed to work with ET and support LTE.
As expected, the GaAs community has offered counterpoints to Qualcomm’s RF360 family of front-end products. The main criticism centers on the belief that the traditional approach of mixing and matching GaAs-based PAs, PMICs, duplexers, filters and switches will always provide the best possible solution in terms of efficiency, performance and flexibility. Ultimately, the market will decide the best solutions, and many more developments in both technologies will probably occur before the best path emerges. However, with more than half of existing GaAs device revenue potentially at risk, the Qualcomm CMOS announcement has definitely captured the attention of GaAs device manufacturers.
