News

10 December 2008

 

High-power RFICs to grow at 6% annually through 2013

ABI Research says that its optimistic forecasts for the penetration of high-powered RF integrated circuits into the mobile wireless base-station market have been borne out by the latest market developments.

The rate of growth in high-power RFIC shipment numbers is expected to level out slightly in 2011, but overall, between 2008 and 2013, revenue should rise a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6%, according to ABI's report ‘High-Power RFICs’. This may seem modest, but should be viewed as strong in an overall declining RF power device market for wireless infrastructure, says ABI. By far the largest share of these revenues will go to just three large vendors.

The new breed of high-powered RFICs is intended mainly for use in base-stations for cellular and other wireless infrastructure. “Compared to the discrete devices they can replace, high-power RFICs take up less circuit board space; they are easier to use; and they cost the same or slightly less,” says research director Lance Wilson. Although the conventional wisdom suggested relatively modest and stable growth for these chips, for several years they have been taking an increasingly significant share of this market. ABI expects that the pace of this market adoption will only increase over time.

The ‘High-Power RFIC’ report forms part of two ABI Research services: its ‘RF Power Devices’ report is a highly segmented market-based analysis of silicon, gallium nitride, gallium arsenide and silicon carbide high-power RF device technologies; the ‘Wireless Semiconductors’ research service covers all technology and market issues releated to semiconductor supplier roadmap strategies and competitive positioning, component analysis, application-specific components, process technologies and IC architecture, design, and integration issues.

See related items:

Base-station RF component market flat at $1.1bn through 2013

Base-station chip sales to fall slowly over next five years

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