As Ampleon opens for business its CEO, Reinier Beltman, commits the company to continued development of mobile broadband initiatives, significant advancement of its RF energy activity and increased investment in R&D.

Ampleon formally completed the formation of its global business operations following the successful acquisition of the RF Power business line by JAC Capital from NXP Semiconductors. With immediate effect Ampleon takes responsibility for the entire RF Power business activity, including sales and support of the complete line-up of LDMOS and GaN RF power products. With 1,250 employees across 16 engineering, sales and manufacturing facilities worldwide, Ampleon is headquartered in Nijmegen, The Netherlands and is founded with 50+ years of product innovation and engineering excellence.

Reinier Beltman, CEO, commented, “With a unique focus on RF power technology and innovation we are extremely well positioned to meet the growing market need for power, cost and space efficient RF solutions. This is not only in our key traditional markets such as wireless infrastructure, broadcast, industrial, scientific and medical, aerospace and defense but also in the new RF energy markets such as solid state cooking and plasma lighting. RF energy applications will see us establishing new partnerships and introduce new products as we embrace these exciting developments across the value chain. We will be working closely with customers to help them adopt RF energy technology into their designs.”

Expanding on the significance of RF energy he told Microwave Journal, “RF energy is one of the reasons why we established Ampleon as we believe there is huge potential well beyond what we have today. In four to five years we see RF energy as being a significant contributor to our revenue stream. It won’t be today or tomorrow but that is absolutely our expectation.”

“We are recognised as the leader in the market. We are working with all the lead customers and co-founded the RF Energy Alliance with companies including Whirlpool. We are working with the number one white goods makers in China, Korea, as well as in Japan.

“This is the number one area where we see growth, both in the professional and consumer white goods sector. This technology has been embraced by all players with an enormous amount of R&D effort by the white goods makers and we see key introductions in the end-market in one or two years.”He added, “This is one of the main reasons why we have been acquired by JAC Capital as it is high a growth market, a significant part of which will take place in China.”

While RF energy is the emerging market, Ampleon’s core business is mobile broadband, which makes up 70 to 80 percent of its business and will continue to be expanded and developed. Beltman stated, “We see mobile broadband as our strong foundation in terms of revenue streams, anticipating moving on from 3G, now 4G, going into 4.5G and with a commitment to 5G.”

With a clear focus to partner with customers to exploit the enormous opportunities of data and energy transfer in RF, Ampleon will increase its commitment to R&D and growing its engineering resources.

Beltman said: “The R&D projects that we have in our pipeline has increased significantly even in the last half year to make sure that we are an even stronger participant in the RF power market. We have agreed with our new ownership to invest a significant part of annual profit into future growth. You should think about the lower teens to high teens of percentage sales reinvested in R&D, which is a significant step up.”

When asked about Ampleon’s target for its first year of operation he stated, “From a business perspective we continue our 4G support and preparing for 4.5G, which is the big thing for 2016. For RF energy we are working with our customers to prepare for first end-market introductions.

Look out for a longer, in-depth Executive Interview with Reinier Beltman that will be posted on the Microwave Journal website in early January.