TriQuint prospects excite Quinsey
GaAs chip maker TriQuint Semiconductor posted revenue of $122.9 million and received all-time-record bookings of $144 million in its latest financial quarter.
The firm, which is headquartered in Oregon, witnessed massive growth in sales of transmit modules for all kinds of cell phone handsets, but particularly for CDMA phones.
Now responsible for just over half of TriQuint s revenue, sales of products for use in handsets were up 35 percent compared with last year. CEO Ralph Quinsey indicated that there would be more growth in the near future, saying:
"[Our] handset product pipeline is more exciting now than it has ever been."
Also getting Quinsey excited are the wireless LAN space, where demand for GaAs is growing strongly, and military applications, where the CEO has raised his expectations.
Having added GaAs chip making capacity over the past several quarters, TriQuint s fab utilization rate stood at "only" 70 percent in the latest three months. However, with many of TriQuint s rivals now hitting capacity limits, Quinsey sees this as an advantage - and an opportunity to grow the business.
With demand for amplifier components transitioning to one for transmit modules in the handset market - and to multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) designs in wireless LAN - the next few months should see TriQuint increase fab utilization with new products.
One of those new products is TriQuint s second-generation, fully integrated MIMO amplifier for wireless LAN, while GaN is also gaining some momentum.
"[We re] moving into the product design phase," said Quinsey of components based on the wide-bandgap semiconductor.
With sales expected to increase to between $125 million and $130 million in the current quarter, Quinsey said that TriQuint will now invest more in research and development, concluding:
"This is an exciting time for TriQuint."
