Amid changing technologies and steep price declines in the competitive market for handset components, four RF chip vendors - RF Micro Devices, Hitachi, Motorola, and the newly formed Skyworks - dominate the handset power amplifier (PA) market, according to market analyst Christopher Taylor of Strategy Analytics. The total market is now estimated at $1.2 billion.
The PA market leader, RF Micro Devices, continues to win new contracts in GSM and CDMA, and has gained several points of market share. However Skyworks has made gains in GSM, and appears to be closing the gap with RFMD, thanks to its InGaP PA technology and its new complete chipset solutions. Hitachi, the historic leader in GSM, has responded to the competition with new modules, and will launch some innovative new products in 2003. Motorola, by virtue of its position as a handset producer and having released several new products in 2002, also gained some share.
Two trends dominated the market for handset power amplifiers in 2002, says Taylor. These are the growth of GaAs HBT compared with alternative PA technologies such as LDMOS, and the increasing dominance of modules over individual power MMICs. GSM handset makers favour the efficiency of GaAs HBTs over LDMOS, especially for new GPRS and W-CMDA designs resulting in a loss of market share for Hitachi's LDMOS modules. HBTs also score over p-HEMT and older MESFET products in both CDMA and GSM, by virtue of their higher battery efficiency.
Modules now make up about 80 percent of the power amplifiers in handsets and continue to take PA slots away from MMIC solutions. Typically the modules integrate 50-ohm input and output matching elements in the package along with the PA chips for as many as four frequency bands. Many modules have a 4mm square form factor, which is popular with the handset vendors compared with larger modules. By the end of 2002, the top four PA producers had all announced PA modules incorporating antenna switch elements and some filters as well as matching elements.Strategy Analytics estimates that Hitachi and RFMD now appear to have approximately equal shares of the GSM PA market at about 25 percent each, and RFMD holds second place after Skyworks --which has 50 percent share - in PAs for CDMA.
Skyworks has strengthened its position by adding InGaP/GaAs HBT power amplifiers to its AlGaAs offerings. InGaP PAs offer steadier performance under changing load and temperature conditions, and potentially better reliability and lower production costs than AlGaAs PAs. The merger of Alpha's InGaP products with Conexant's under the umbrella of the Skyworks brand has meant that InGaP accounted for at least 40 percent of Skyworks' PA production in 2002, according to Strategy Analytics estimates. In 2002 Skyworks launched PA modules for GSM that incorporate transmit/receive switches, and announced plans to produce a "single package radio" (SPR) for GSM containing PAs, transceiver, switches, filters, and most passives in one multi-chip module package.
Motorola is said to have lost share in 2001 with the displacement of MESFET PAs by GaAs HBT amplifiers, but has responded by offering an enhancement-mode p-HEMT power amplifier module, and also released GaAs HBT PAs and modules incorporating transmit/receive switches.
Overall, Taylor estimates that the top four vendors - RFMD, Skyworks, Hitachi and Motorola - increased their combined share of the market by about 5 percentage points in 2002 at the expense of the smaller players. Sales of power amplifiers for handsets totalled an estimated $1.2 billion worldwide in 2002, driven by shipments of 418 million handsets. Although the market for PAs remained approximately flat from 2001, conditions began to improve in the second half of 2002.
