According to a recently released industry and market report from Engalco—MMICs2—which analyzes the compound semiconductor MMICs market to 2015, GaAs MMICs will remain important, while GaN and SiGe MMICs will progressively invade these markets. Although the overall worldwide total markets are forecasted to reach $6.26 B in 2015, this total continues to be dominated by the commodity markets of cell phones (over $3 B) and both intelligent cruise control and mobile WiMAX ($1.2 B each). After these end-users have been considered, the remaining market segments of defense, ISM, microwave radio, millimeter-wave radio, SATCOM and SATNAV, all come in with much lower market shares. Of these, microwave radio accounts for a market worth approximately $280 M in 2015 and millimeter-wave radio exhibits exceptionally high (double-digit) growth to reach $420 M in the same year. The latter market is driven by the exploding capacity requirements of multi-Gbit links. In the defense segment North America (principally the US) leads, but both Europe and Asia (especially) are increasingly important. This report indicates in quantitative depth of detail how both GaN- and SiGe-based MMICs will progressively invade many market segments. The utility of GaN MMICs for high-power/high-efficiency RF amplification is becoming well known and the application will also be extended to other functions in RF modules. SiGe-based MMICs are already being implemented in low-power signal processing roles—mainly in receivers and switches. In this report, average selling prices and shipments are provided—again with forecasts to 2015. A total of 64 MMIC manufacturing and "fabless" companies are identified and discussed. The industry structure is critiqued in detail. For further information, e-mail: enquiries@engalco-research.com.
