Telecom Lead America: With rapid development of phones
with four or more W-CDMA and LTE bands, the market for RF and associated radio
components in cellphones and other cellular terminals is expected to surpass
$30 billion in 2016, mainly driven by Basebands, PAs, FEMs in multiband 3G / 4G
devices, according to Strategy Analytics.
The report says the dawn of phones with four or more
W-CDMA and LTE bands has opened up the market to multimode, multiband PAs
(MM-MB PAs), accompanied by more complex front-end modules containing filters,
antenna switches and duplexers.
GaAs PA suppliers such as, RFMD, Murata / Renesas,
TriQuint and Avago Tech will be an integral part of the market growth, as they
provide more complete solutions for the RF front ends in phones.
Eric Higham, Director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and
Compound Semiconductor market research service said that each company has its
own mix of products and technological strengths, and the direction the market
takes combined with new component technologies will play big roles in the
success of these companies in cellphones.
The market for RF components alone, excluding RF
transceivers and basebands, will also grow an average 9 percent per year to
more than $5 billion in 2016, the report predicts.
“Drain modulation ICs, which can improve the
efficiency of a PA tasked with covering more bands or modes, will also make
inroads, especially in multimode, multiband LTE smartphones. Based on regional
bands, partitioning trends and the number of expected cellular terminals
shipped,” said Christopher Taylor, Ddirector, Strategy Analytics RF &
Wireless Components.
Cellular power amplifier market grew 19 percent in 2011
Earlier, the research firm said that the cellular power
amplifier (PA) market achieved a growth of 19 percent, to more than $3.3
billion in 2011, driven by the growth of cellular terminal shipments to an
estimated 2.3 billion units.
editor@telecomlead.com
