Leaders pull away from the pack in GaAs market
RF Micro Devices (RFMD) and Skyworks Solutions are pulling clear of their rivals in the GaAs device market, according to a new report.
The Strategy Analytics market review suggests that the two front-runners both have a market share of around 28%, with fellow US chip manufacturer TriQuint providing the main competition.
Despite the very strong growth of the cell-phone handset market in 2004, this translated into only modest growth at the GaAs device level, which represented a $2.4 billion market overall - compared with $2.2 billion in 2002 and $2.3 billion in 2003.
However, as Strategy Analytics' GaAs analyst Asif Anwar noted, the overall flatness of the sector masks some big fluctuations in the sale of different types of components.
For example, the GaAs MMIC market grew by around 13% on the back of robust cell-phone sales, whereas the digital GaAs device market is now virtually non-existent. Sales of discrete GaAs devices also fell away in 2004, said Anwar.
In 2005, there may be an opportunity for the second-tier GaAs MMIC vendors to catch the leading pair as consumers in mature cell-phone markets switch on to third-generation services:
"It is going to be a real struggle for other suppliers to catch up with [RFMD and Skyworks] in 2005, but opportunities moving ahead could still shake up GaAs device market share positioning," said Anwar.
According to the analyst, Skyworks managed to close the gap on RFMD in 2004 thanks to success in the Asia-Pacific zone, where it managed to bundle sales of power amplifiers (PAs) with other handset components.
Anwar added that the Woburn, MA, company has done well in the wireless LAN sector.
Strategy Analytics' report "GaAs device vendor market share 2004" is the first in a two-part series profiling the leading GaAs device vendors, and focuses on North American companies.
