Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/13151-rfmd-commences-production-of-polaris-tm-3-total-radio-tm

RFMD® Commences Production of POLARIS(tm) 3 TOTAL RADIO(tm)

July 26, 2007
GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA - July 26, 2007 - RF Micro Devices, (NASDAQ: RFMD), a global leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance radio systems and solutions for applications that drive mobile communications, today announced that it has commenced volume production of its POLARIS(tm) 3 TOTAL RADIO(tm) RF system solution to support customer orders. RFMD's POLARIS 3 is a fully integrated quad-band EDGE RF solution that offers unmatched levels of RF functionality. Commercial shipments of POLARIS 3 are expected to begin in the September 2007 quarter, and production volumes of POLARIS 3 are forecast to increase sequentially throughout calendar year 2008. Bob Bruggeworth, president and CEO of RFMD, said, "The commencement of commercial production of POLARIS 3 represents the culmination of years of technology development, as we have assembled the design, manufacturing and packaging competencies necessary to supply large production volumes of the industry's most highly integrated RF system solution. Our POLARIS 3 RF solution enables handset manufacturers to quickly and cost-effectively deploy a high-performance, system-in-package (SiP) RF implementation across multiple handsets and market tiers. RFMD is the global leader in cellular RF, and we will continue to invest in the technologies and resources necessary to help advance our customers' competitive positions." Eric Creviston, corporate vice president of RFMD's cellular products group, said, "POLARIS 3 is a highly integrated, complete system-in-package solution that performs all the critical functions of the RF section of an handset, including the cellular transceiver, power amplification, filtering and transmit/receive switch, in two easy-to-place modules shielded by advanced integrated RF shielding technology. As a result, POLARIS 3 reduces the RF footprint by approximately 50%, compared to leading solutions, and offers handset manufacturers the benefits of platform flexibility, ease-of-use, reduced size, low cost and high performance." RFMD's POLARIS 3 is a complete RF solution. It features a highly integrated radio transceiver module that incorporates a single-chip CMOS EDGE transceiver, the full crystal oscillator and all necessary receive filter functionality. The solution also features RFMD's industry-leading front end technology, including the power amplifier and transmit/receive switch. Finally, the revolutionary POLARIS 3 RF solution includes integrated RF shielding and will benefit from RFMD's patent-pending integrated RF shielding technology. When implemented, POLARIS 3 eliminates the need for costly and cumbersome metal RF shields on the phone board while reducing component placements by approximately 80 percent, leading to a remarkable savings in solution size and height. RFMD is the industry leader in cellular front ends. With the ramp of POLARIS 3, RFMD is increasing its dollar content within its cellular RF solutions. Specifically, RFMD's POLARIS solutions command approximately three times the dollar content of EDGE cellular front ends.