Thematic Research and Bits & Bytes

WOLF, COHR: Thin wafers should improve the fundamental profitability of SiC. (December 11, 2024)
Excerpt: Typical 6-inch wafers are 350um thick, but until recently 8-inch wafers were sliced to 500um to improve structural integrity and reduce bowing and warping on the larger diameters. Now multiple suppliers including Coherent, SK Siltron, and Resonac are sampling 350um-thick, 8-inch wafers for production next year. This should allow incumbent suppliers to remain competitive with low-cost, low-performance Chinese wafers.

QRVO, SWKS, QCOM, AAPL: Bloomberg’s Apple modem note is this year’s most confused missive on RF. (December 6, 2024)
Excerpt: There are many components other than RF filters that are essential to the operation of iPhone and are so specialized that they’re sole sourced. An easy example are antenna and impedance tuners, 20 of which were used in iPhone 16 and all of them provided by Qorvo.

TXN, ADI, ON, IFX, STM, MCHP, NXPI: Lower demand, margin headwinds likely challenge analog semis into 2025. (November 19, 2024)
Excerpt: While faster inventory digestion could set up for a better 2025, lower vehicle production and EV adoption would be a significant headwind throughout 2025. Automotive and industrial account for a large portion of analog semiconductor sales so continued weakness in these markets could put a damper on analog stocks until mid-2025.

QRVO, SWKS, AVGO: New competitive dynamic at Apple is bad news for QRVO and SWKS. (November 2, 2024)
Excerpt: Given Wireless revenue has risen only 13% in seven years, we believe management was reticent to increase OPEX on the chance it could displace a tough incumbent like Skyworks on a complex module it’s never supplied. So it passed on competing for the TX-DSM because the investment wasn’t worth the risk. The calculus for that has changed, however.

WOLF, COHR, STM, IFX.DE, ON, NVTS: ICSCRM 2024: SiC conference headlined by Chinese competition, thin 200mm wafers. (October 4, 2024)
Excerpt: Throughout the conference it was evident that the silicon carbide slowdown is not letting up, due to slower-than-expected EV adoption and inventory corrections in the industrial and energy markets. Lower demand plus stronger competition from Chinese wafer suppliers have made cost reductions a priority, particularly in materials, and data from the conference suggests the industry is making considerable progress on 200mm yields as well as thinner (less expensive) 200mm wafers.

AMD, AVGO, INTC, MRVL, NVDA: Be careful using MLPerf as a proxy for real world performance. (August 30, 2024)
Excerpt: AlexNet’s stellar performance was derived from a novel model (simple by today’s standard) run on GPUs. Its success spurred much of the academic and industry work that led to the MLPerf benchmark. Since then the benchmark has expanded, but to remain comparable over time, it maintains a degree of backward compatibility in model size and metrics, runs on GPUs, and evaluates basic workloads. Those constraints have made it more a target for chip companies to chase than a measure of real world performance.

TXN, ADI, ON, STM, IFX.DE, MCHP, NXPI: Not quite wheels up for analog semis, but the plane is taxiing. (August 22, 2024)
Excerpt: Quarterly analog sales have declined more than 20% since peaking in 2022 and aggregated September guidance implies the first sequential revenue increase since June 2023. More importantly, combined September outlooks mark the first improvement in y/y revenue and gross margin trends since June 2022.

IFX.DE, ON, STM, WOLF, NVTS, TXN: Webinar takeaways: The shift from EVs to hybrids and implications for semiconductors. (June 11, 2024)
Excerpt: Incremental content gains when moving from gas engines to electrified powertrains are largely driven by the need for more and higher-power IGBTs and power MOSFETs. There are tailwinds to other semiconductors such as analog and digital logic but they are more often driven by the vehicle’s tier or price tag rather than its level of electrification. As a result, the vast majority of the 8%-10% shrinkage in the 2030 automotive semiconductor TAM from lower BEV adoption is due to less power content.

IFX.DE, ON, STM, WOLF, NVTS: Power needs of AI datacenters present significant opportunity for SiC and GaN. (March 28, 2024)
Excerpt: As a result the power density of datacenters, or how much electricity is used for a given footprint, is going to increase substantially to accommodate power-hungry AI capabilities. Silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductors boast significantly higher power density than silicon because faster switching and fewer losses (greater efficiency) allow datacenters to use the same amount of power in a materially smaller footprint.

SWKS, QCOM, QRVO, AVGO: iPhone 16: SWKS giving up share to QCOM; QCOM RF content likely down y/y. (March 18, 2024)
Excerpt: As we discussed in previous notes and conference calls, we believe the modem extension agreement Apple signed with Qualcomm last fall included new restrictions limiting Apple’s ability to wiggle out of awarding Qualcomm RF content. As a consequence, it appears the OEM is taking RF modules from Murata and Skyworks, which it favors, and awarding them to Qualcomm, which it loathes.

WOLF, ON, STM, TSLA: APEC 2024: Tesla’s new inverter uses far less SiC but likely leads to higher SiC MOSFET demand. (March 6, 2024)
Excerpt: The push for a low cost EV makes sense in light of the impressive increase in sales of the Model 3/Y after several rounds of price reductions. If the inverter in the NV9X platform uses 75% less SiC than in the Model 3/Y, it would still translate to significantly higher SiC demand given most low-cost EVs now use silicon.

WOLF, ON, STM, IFX.DE, NVTS: APEC 2024 themes: Datacenter power content, GaN in EVs, vertical GaN. (March 4, 2024)
Excerpt: Larger workloads require more power (heat), creating a significant opportunity for SiC and GaN which improve efficiency and reduce the need for cooling. Google, Meta, Amazon and other hyperscalers are projecting hundreds of billions in CAPEX over the next several years to increase capacity for AI applications. If a small fraction of that spending trickles down to power devices it would have a meaningful impact on the TAM for SiC and GaN.

QRVO, SWKS, AVGO, QCOM: Huawei’s Mate 60 poses no threat to U.S. RF semi suppliers. (November 30, 2023)
Excerpt: If you crack open any of the leading advanced 4G or 5G smartphones, you’ll find an RF front-end built using modules from Broadcom, Skyworks, Qorvo and, to a lesser extent, Murata and Qualcomm. This is the case even with Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Honor, Chinese OEMs being compelled by their government to source from domestic suppliers but still selecting Western modules for flagship models.

QRVO, SWKS, AVGO, QCOM: Chinese RF is no threat to U.S. suppliers, on the contrary. (October 12, 2023)
Excerpt: Chinese RF suppliers are, for the most part, discrete component manufacturers trying to grow into modules. Leaders such as Vanchip and Maxscend have carved a niche out in discrete switches and amplifiers but their attempts to gain share in the high-density modules for 5G and 4G Advanced phones have thus far failed. Were it otherwise, we would see them in teardowns of the leading smartphones instead of waiting for Huawei to field a 5G phone using only domestic suppliers.

WOLF, ON, STM, IFX.DE: Major themes from SiC power conference: wafer shortages, rising equipment demand, China’s growing presence and progress toward 200mm. (September 28, 2023)
Excerpt: One of the clearest indications from the International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (ICSCRM) last week in Sorrento, Italy is that despite significant capacity expansions, wafer supply remains tight, and this appears to have become more acute over the past three months.

QRVO, SWKS, AVGO, QCOM: Wish upon a Huawei star. (July 14, 2023)
Excerpt: Huawei was the first in production with a fairly good 5G baseband but lost the ability to produce it once sanctions took hold. It’s trying to get back in the game using Chinese technology but those are three-to-four generations behind what Qualcomm and MediaTek use. Worse still, its application processor is at least that far behind in hardware and further in software.

QRVO, SWKS, AVGO, WOLF, STM, IFX.DE, COHR, NVTS: Chinese Ga/Ge restrictions not a threat to U.S. firms in the long-term. (July 6, 2023)
Excerpt: Reductions in shipments of Gallium and Germanium from Chinese producers can be offset by suppliers in Japan, Korea, Germany, Belgium, Russia, the Congo and, eventually, the U.S. Because those materials are byproducts of zinc and aluminum (Al) production, there are few impediments to developing new sources.

SiC Wafer Spotlight - Tianyu: Chinese demand strong but competing internationally will be a challenge. (April 11, 2023)
Excerpt: The majority of SiC wafers used in China are supplied by foreign companies, although trade disputes and the country’s push for technological independence should benefit Tianyu, even if its epiwafer quality lags foreign competitors.

QCOM, AAPL, QRVO, SWKS, AVGO: Apple modem delays likely push its debut to 2025. (April 5, 2023)
Excerpt: When it bought Intel’s baseband group in late 2019, conventional wisdom predicted the modem’s debut in 2022. Having followed nearly every cell phone modem development since Samsung launched its effort in 1999, we didn’t believe any firm could enter the market and field a competitive baseband in less than four years.

VZ: Down the rabbit hole. Is it time for new leadership? (March 27, 2023)
Excerpt: Between CAPEX for a network with scant coverage and few users, millions in subsidies to Apple to include mmWave in iPhone, and CPE radios with no buyers, Verizon spent three years digging a mmWave hole only to follow it with $45B for C-band licenses and CAPEX for C-band equipment. Its reward for such prodigious spending has been a record increase in churn and steady decline in margins.

IFX.DE, STM, ON, WOLF, NVTS, MRN: APEC 2023 takeaways: GaN-on-silicon takes the spotlight. (March 23, 2023)
Excerpt: Total GaN revenue is a few hundred million now so we expect the power semiconductor companies which missed out on the silicon carbide ramp are jumping into GaN before it evolves into a multi-billion dollar market. However the difference is that SiC had two significant catalysts: a substantial decline in cost and adoption in the Tesla Model 3.

STM, ON, WOLF: Fears of lower automotive SiC content miss several key nuances. (March 10, 2023)
Excerpt: Tesla’s comments on fielding an inverter that uses less silicon carbide were one part of a larger presentation on various initiatives it’s undertaking to field a lower priced EV. The discussion included copious detail about cost reductions in many other areas including manufacturing operations. Investors jumped on and amplified its SiC comments to the detriment of STM, WOLF and ON but the overarching theme of its investor day was expansion into lower price tiers, not cost and performance reductions in current models.

SWKS, QRVO: iPhone 15 RF front end content estimates. (February 14, 2023)
Excerpt: Like last year, we believe the largest increase in RFFE content for iPhone 15 will be for more dual-connectivity, which are more band combinations of download carrier aggregation and EN-DC (4G/5G simultaneous operation). We showed these trends in our iPhone 14 teardown presentation (“Charter’s Die-Level Teardown of the iPhone 14, A Detailed Look at RF Components and Content”, September 19, 2022) and are confident they’ll continue with iPhone 15.

AVGO, QCOM, QRVO, SWKS: Apple is still not getting into RF module design. (January 12, 2023)
Excerpt: Taking Bloomberg's speculation as fact is bad enough, but extrapolating that to Apple in-sourcing RF components is grossly incorrect. If it had been released a year ago it would have seen stiff competition from another Bloomberg article that made the same claim because its authors didn't understand the difference between basebands, transceivers and RF components.

ON, STM, WOLF, COHR, SWKS, QRVO: Takeaways from CES 2023. (January 9, 2023)
Excerpt: While Sony and Samsung account for the majority of the broader CMOS image sensor market, Onsemi and STMicro are strongly positioned in the automotive portion of the market and sell a wide array of other automotive semiconductor devices so they can capture more business through bundling. Coherent’s 3D sensing business is currently geared toward the iPhone but in-cabin sensing should provide additional growth opportunities if smartphone content growth moderates.

SiC Wafer Spotlight – Showa Denko: Strong player in epitaxy making a push into substrates. (December 15, 2022)
Excerpt: Customers’ insourcing efforts and new entrants cast a pall over Showa Denko’s prospects as an epitaxial pure-play which is why it’s shifting its focus to substrates. An internal source of substrates would eliminate the margin stacking from purchasing substrates externally and as a result Showa Denko could lower the price of its epiwafers to remain competitive. If successful, 200mm wafers would provide another cost advantage although given the company is less than one year into its 150mm ramp we don’t expect 200mm volume production for several years.

SiC Wafer Spotlight – TankeBlue: China’s largest wafer supplier likely struggles to compete abroad. (December 1, 2022)
Excerpt: Since the Huawei ban in 2019, China has ramped investments in its own semiconductor industry to wean itself off American chips. Given TankeBlue is a state-owned enterprise we expect the company’s decision to build a new factory was influenced by the government and not necessarily due to outsize demand for wafers.

SiC Wafer Spotlight – SK Siltron: Considerable experience meets substantial opportunity. (November 29, 2022)
Excerpt: The company’s long-term guidance is relatively aggressive, and while it has made considerable progress in scaling the SiC wafer business in just a few years, adding capacity is arduous for any company. Despite this challenge, SK Siltron is forecasting production to increase from 30K wafers in 2021 to 600K by 2025, roughly equivalent to the entire SiC wafer market today.

QRVO, SWKS, AVGO, QCOM: What to expect for iPhone 14 RF content gains by supplier. (September 7, 2022)
Excerpt: Once Apple provides details of the iPhone 14, we’ll have considerably better visibility on exactly where RF content is increasing and who will get what. Nevertheless, we already have sufficient information to make rough predictions by vendor.

IFNNY, WOLF, ON, STM, ROHCY: Infineon’s new fab illustrates soaring demand from industrial and solar customers. (February 18, 2022)
Excerpt: Although EVs have been the primary focus of management, analysts and investors alike, the industrial market has been and will remain the primary catalyst for silicon carbide device revenue growth for the next few years. We believe Infineon is building its new fab not necessarily in anticipation of EV ramps in 2024 and beyond but to fulfill stronger demand from industrial customers.

Humor dominated Super Bowl commercials, but the biggest joke were ads for EV trucks. (February 16, 2022)
Excerpt: Like spots hawking cryptocurrency, the EV ads were long on the promise of happiness and short on delivery. Of particular amusement were Toyota's and GM's ads for electric pickup trucks. You could hardly ask for a better joke than an electric work truck, which is probably the supreme example of over-promising and under-delivering.

CREE: A detailed analysis of what Mohawk Valley has to do for Cree to hit FY24 targets (September 11, 2021)
Excerpt: To estimate the probability of success and better understand what has to occur and when, we undertook a detailed study of Cree's material and device fabs and compared them to a rival SiC power device fab at Infineon. The results of our analysis increased our confidence Cree can achieve its FY24 targets but also highlighted the hurdles in the daunting tasks ahead.

VZ: Verizon ignores the first law of holes: If you find yourself in one, stop digging. (February 25, 2021)
Excerpt: The 5G game has proven more expensive for Verizon than any other domestic carrier largely because of its own mistakes. To earn bragging rights and promote its 5G prowess, it jumped the gun on the 5G standard with 5G TF, deployed expensive, poor performing mmWave systems on a few streets while burdening handsets nationwide with higher BOM costs and itself with higher subsidies. When the performance of its DSS system fell below its 4G LTE service, it added another layer of cost to its handsets. When it was clear its mmWave mistakes and DSS band-aids weren't going to deliver a usable system, it spent lavishly on C-band spectrum.

RF Semiconductors, CREE: Semi shortage has little impact on RF and none on silicon carbide. (February 19, 2021)
Excerpt: The problems in semiconductor supply are primarily focused in digital CMOS and, to a lesser extent, mixed signal (digital and low frequency analog) products, all of which are silicon-based. RF components are high-frequency analog devices fabricated on GaAs, SiGe, SOI and variety of piezoelectric acoustic materials. All of Cree's products are power devices on silicon carbide. As such there is virtually no overlap between the digital CMOS/mixed signal supply chain and the RF semi supply chain and zero overlap with silicon carbide.

AAPL: Detailed analysis of impending changes in 3D sensing in iPhone. (February 10, 2021)
Excerpt: We believe changes in the 3D sensing systems employed by iPhone 13 this year and iPhone 14 next year will have significant impacts on LITE, IIVI, AMS and STM. A recent client request for a detailed evaluation of what’s currently being used and what’s likely to change provided us the opportunity to do a deep dive into the technologies of 3D sensing.

RF Semiconductors: Apple: Highly unlikely to build its own RF modules. (November 30, 2020)
Excerpt: A recent press report suggesting Apple may begin building its own RF module has stoked investor concern about the long-term prospects for RF businesses at Broadcom, Qorvo and Skyworks. We believe there's little chance Apple will try to bring RF modules in-house. Apple has a lot of experience designing high-density, digital CMOS devices and zero experience in high-frequency analog. The difference in engineering between the two is the difference between a certified public accountant and an Olympic fencer.

RF Semiconductors: Surprises from our teardown of the iPhone 12. (November 2, 2020)
Excerpt: From an RFFE architecture perspective the biggest surprise was antenna count, which was far above anything we thought possible. In big content years a single antenna would be added but between an ever-expanding RF component count and a limitation on the size of the case, it was generally believed six-to-eight antennas was the limit. Last year’s iPhone (11) had six antennas so we expected six to seven in iPhone 12; our teardown found 13.

RF Semiconductors: iPhone 12 RF content estimates likely too low. (October 26, 2020)
Excerpt: Our teardown of iPhone 12 reveals substantial y/y content increases for Broadcom and Skyworks and higher than expected content for Qorvo. On Friday, we received the U.S. model of iPhone 12 (A2172) and performed our initial board level tear-down in preparation of a more detailed die level analysis on Monday. Of the three RFFE SKUs used for iPhone 12, the A2172 is the most complex, supporting 37 bands including mmWave. It also includes all the advanced features required for 5G including the ability to download six data streams at the same time and transmit two signals to the base station simultaneously.

RF Semiconductors: Huawei sanctions benefiting Qorvo and II-VI. (September 21, 2020)
Excerpt: U.S. semiconductor manufacturers have witnessed firsthand the downside to supplying Huawei and will likely avoid the OEM even if sanctions are eased, to insulate themselves from sudden shocks in demand. Mobile RF semiconductor suppliers have found suitable replacements for the lost Huawei revenue and infrastructure semiconductor manufacturers have pivoted away from Huawei.

RF Semiconductors: The 5G iPhone mmWave dilemma. (September 8, 2020)
Excerpt: Normally the answer to the SKU question is "two plus". Unfortunately, in the year of COVID, nothing is normal. Verizon’s requirement that all high-end 5G smartphones support its flailing mmWave service throws a wrench in Apple’s SKU machine. Nothing about mmWave appeals to phone OEMs. They’d rather not include it, but if they don’t, Verizon won’t support the phone and given how important carrier sales are to unit volumes in the U.S., Verizon’s wishes are effectively their command.

Rapid selloff, rapid recovery: What 25 years of market corrections tells us about economic impact of COVID-19. (April 18, 2020)
Excerpt: Panic regarding COVID-19 kicked off a market selloff that set records in magnitude and speed. It’s since recovered most of those losses but remains depressed on concerns the economic impact of the cure will be worse than the disease. It’s a reasonable fear given the record $10B/day decline in the S&P500 in March was followed by government shuttering of much of the economy, leading to the fastest increase in unemployment in peacetime.

RF Semiconductors: New iPhone SE uses iPhone 11 front-end, INTC baseband. (April 15, 2020)
Excerpt: Apple just announced the release of the new iPhone SE. The specifications suggest it reuses the iPhone 11 RFFE which isn’t a surprise given the phone exists to address the mid-tier price segment ($400 ASP) so cost reduction is paramount. New RFFE architectures are expensive as are new basebands so, as we expected, iPhone SE reuses last year’s iPhone 11 front-end and the Intel baseband that powered it.

Semiconductors, OEMs: Coronavirus: Large and pervasive negative impact on demand. (February 18, 2020)
Excerpt: We believe the coronavirus’ impact on the Chinese economy will force many of the companies in our coverage to preannounce the March period or miss consensus forecasts on the quarter and for the June quarter. The government’s extension of the Chinese New Year, its lock down of entire provinces and the quarantine of tens of millions of Chinese citizens has undercut demand and stymied production. Restrictions on movement extend well beyond Wuhan and include Beijing, where the state is now requiring 14 days of isolation for anyone entering the city.

RF Semiconductors: Huawei Mate 30 Pro teardown suggests a return to U.S. components is inevitable. (January 7, 2020)
Excerpt: In December we tore down Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro 5G to determine whether it contained any U.S. RF components and if not, what type of work-around was implemented to make up for the loss of high-density RF modules that can only be sourced from U.S. suppliers. As we predicted in several notes and investor calls dating back to the Huawei ban in May 2019, the phone doesn’t use any U.S. RF components and as a consequence, Huawei had to revert to an old, discrete architecture for the RF front end (RFFE).

RF Semiconductors: How Huawei can field flagship smartphones without U.S. components. (September 26, 2019)
Excerpt: Huawei can’t short-circuit 25 years of knowledge and experience in RF to fabricate its own components and it can’t buy what it needs from U.S. suppliers, which leaves it with four choices: 1) abandon flagship models, 2) release phones using what components it can obtain from non-U.S. sources, 3) pull back from difficult RF regions and concentrate on China and India, 4) develop a backchannel to U.S. suppliers.

RF Semiconductors: Mislabeling parts doesn’t help Huawei’s predicament. (August 14, 2019)
Excerpt: A recent teardown of Huawei's Mate 20 X 5G phone by Tech Insights misidentifies several RF components, confusing small, inexpensive parts for large, high-ASP modules. These errors were amplified Monday by a competitor's note citing Tech Insights’ analysis as proof that Chinese component manufacturers, more specifically HiSilicon, are replacing U.S. RF modules with internally sourced devices. This is not correct.

RF Semiconductors: Why Huawei needs U.S. components to build flagship smartphones. (August 9, 2019)
Excerpt: The U.S. government’s ban on most exports to Huawei has stoked speculation the Chinese OEM can replace U.S. RF components with Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese suppliers. This is highly unlikely. The size and performance requirements for a competitive LTE Advanced, LTE Pro or 5G phone require OEMs to employ complex, high-density RF modules that are only available from Broadcom, Qorvo and Skyworks; there are no other alternatives.

RF Semiconductors: You can’t build a flagship smartphone without U.S. RF semiconductors. (July 27, 2019)
Excerpt: The Huawei kerfuffle had investors questioning the possibility of the Chinese OEMs replacing U.S.-sourced semiconductors in the RF front-end (RFFE) and carrying on as normal. Huawei has made claims to that effect".

Welcome to the 5G logo wars. (June 27, 2019)
Excerpt: We've been told by several folks deep across wide swathes of the wireless food chain, the killer application for 5G is the logo on the box that says "5G". It certainly seems to be playing out that way. T-Mobile has built out a 4G network on its new 600MHz band (Band 71) onto which it will dabble the smallest spec of 5G - higher density modulation on a paltry 10MHz of the 35MHz band and then crown the entire service "5G".

Over-charging for 5G modems has consequences. (June 20, 2019)
Excerpt: Even before the FTC ruling, Qualcomm’s grip on the cellular baseband market was slipping. Intel emerged as a suitable replacement at Apple (at least for 4G), Huawei sourced nearly all its needs from HiSilicon, and Samsung was using its own LSI modem in everything from the Galaxy and Note to mid-tier models. Oppo and Vivo ebbed and flowed with MediaTek while Xiaomi was heavily committed to Qualcomm.

Thou shalt not pass. (June 18, 2019)
Excerpt: RFFE modules will grow in size and complexity, but they won't combine low with mid-high bands. Having tracked the evolution of RF front-ends from before Triquint introduced the PAD in 2005, we've witnessed the growth in RF modules from single band to 12 bands in the 2018 modules. The relentless increase in size and content has investors wondering when they will see one module to rule them all; a single placement device combining low, mid and high bands.

Massive MiMo is French for WiFi. (June 13, 2019)
Excerpt: Any conversation about 5G in cell phones inevitably involves discussion of massive MiMo (beam steering antenna arrays) because there's no practical way to establish a radio link to a mobile phone over 5G frequencies (Sub-6 or mmWAVE) without them. This makes "5G" and "massive MiMo" synonyms at least as far as connections to cell phones are concerned. The problem for carriers is that "massive MiMo" and "Mobility" are antonyms.

Impact of Huawei ban on phones, base stations and semiconductors. (May 22, 2019)
Excerpt: On Wednesday, May 15, the U.S. government banned U.S. firms from shipping products to Huawei, causing an extended sell-off in semiconductor and equipment stocks. Heavily reliant upon American technology, Huawei finds itself in a similar position as ZTE when it was blacklisted in April of last year. That ban nearly drove the company out of business and even after it was lifted in July, the damage persisted as many customers shifted to other suppliers that didn’t face the possibility of future disruptions.

GaN is good, but not for handsets. (May 16, 2019)
Excerpt: After a decade of gestation, GaN is finally coming into its own. The advantages over silicon and GaAs in power output and efficiency are substantial enough to get the notoriously parsimonious wireless network OEMs to pay up for GaN in 5G base station power amplifiers. The defense industry has been using it for years and every new hypersonic, stealth and ballistic missile threat increases the depth and breadth of its reach in land, sea and airborne radar.

The ripple effect of the Apple-Qualcomm settlement. (April 30, 2019)
Excerpt: The litigation settlement between Apple and Qualcomm will ripple through the food chain, altering content expectations for the various component suppliers. The biggest beneficiary is obviously QCOM which experienced its largest single-day stock price increase in nearly 20 years; a testament of how much more important a settlement was to Qualcomm than to Apple, which was up only 1%.

5G and the fallacy of faster duty cycle. (April 22, 2019)
Excerpt: 5G: If you're deep in the mobile cellular world and given to technical discussions sooner or later, you’ll probably find yourself in threadbare debates with 5G evangelists over use cases. The starting point is usually how the lack of spectrum in the legacy cell bands pushed 5G to higher-frequencies. High-frequencies don't propagate well so getting enough signal to the phone requires "massive MiMo".

Euphoria over Apple settlement may be short lived but it's not good news for Qorvo. (April 17, 2019)
Excerpt: 5G: Intel thought it could, but Apple didn’t share that confidence. As recently as last week, our checks deep in the baseband supply chain showed a high degree of confidence that Intel would deliver its 5G modem to Apple on time. It also revealed Apple didn’t share this opinion and in fact, had little confidence in Intel’s ability to meet its schedule.

The 5G Fairy Tale. (March 27, 2019)
Excerpt: 5G is turning into a pretty nice little bubble, especially for Qualcomm. The sell-side is teeming with reports of Qualcomm’s success in landing modem and RF content in most 2nd and 3rd tier 5G phones slated for release this year. The facts of those wins may be true, but the implications are not.

The cost of testing 5G phones could kill them at birth. (February 4, 2019)
Excerpt: Unlike in LTE, 5G requires MiMo, which broadcasts multiple signals on multiple antennas, every one of which must be tested across all bands, modes and use cases. With so many more combinations to deal with, test equipment for 5G is extremely complex, much more so than for 4G.

Apple's future in phones. (January 12, 2019)
Excerpt: Apple’s problems don’t have to lead to failure, but in the long run they probably will. The path it will doubtlessly follow was forged by Ericsson in 2001 and retraced by every major handset OEM failure since . Product problems at each of those companies undercut unit sales, ate into margins and put them further behind their competitors.

What to expect for Apple & the RF semi suppliers. (January 3, 2019)
Excerpt: Apple’s problems are nothing new and likely to become more acute. Having covered the handset industry since 1997, we had a front row seat to a long procession of failures in phones starting with Ericsson in 2001 followed by Siemens (’05), Motorola (’07), Sony-Ericsson (’08), Nokia (’09) and finally Blackberry (’12).

Trade wars, embargoes, hurricanes - RF content is still going up. (October 23, 2018)
Excerpt: Building a 4G phone without U.S. components is like trying to launch satellites without rockets. A recent note out of a competitor calls for zero content growth at U.S. RF semiconductor manufacturers on the belief that Chinese OEMs are shifting to Japanese suppliers to ameliorate the impact of trade war restrictions.

Will the U.S./China trade war impact iPhone sales? (October 16, 2018)
Excerpt: The trade war could affect iPhone sales, but we believe there are other more important factors impacting unit sales which have nothing to do with China. Saturation in high-end demand. High-end smart phone unit sales have been stagnant for several years now, a trend evident in both Apple and Samsung’s results.

Qualcomm's campaign to put a man on Mars. (October 12, 2018)
Excerpt: We’ve received a plethora of requests to handicap Qualcomm’s prospects in 5G, particularly in mmWAVE. These are largely the result of the marketing campaign Qualcomm pursued in January to fight off Broadcom, which was amplified more recently by a sell-side competitor’s breathless regurgitation of the company’s marketing flyers as research.

RF Semiconductors: What's ailing wireless? (September 19, 2018)
Excerpt: Over the last several weeks we have fielded a large number of investor calls on the weakness in the RF semiconductor stocks, especially SWKS and QRVO. Most questions focus on three primary concerns but a poll of large holders and the companies themselves suggest there are four concerns pressuring the stocks.

Bull case on Qualcomm's 5G RF is far off the mark. (August 8, 2018)
Excerpt: Lowering price targets on the threat of losing 0.8% in revenue in two years seems nonsensical? A competitor’s note on Monday claiming Qualcomm’s gains in 5G RF are a blow to Skyworks and Qorvo is far off the mark in our opinion, stretching comments from a single "expert network" consultant to illogical conclusions not backed by events and trends on the ground.

The Big Challenge for 5G (June 28, 2018)
Excerpt: It’s difficult to make a singular statement about 5G other than it’s the Tower of Babel for wireless standards; a technology looking for a market. Like the wireless broadband systems of the early milieu, 5G is just the latest version of the "If you build it, they will come" school of economics.

Thoughts on GaN (June 19, 2018)
Excerpt: The International Microwave Symposium (IMS) was held in Philadelphia last week. It may sound like a conference on cooking, but it’s actually one of the preeminent gatherings of engineers and scientists in RF semiconductors.

Qualcomm vs. Broadcom: Checkers or Chess? (February 13, 2018)
Excerpt: With last week’s unanimous rejection of Broadcom's second offer, Qualcomm’s future will now be determined by the board election on March 6.

Points of interest on RF. (January 16, 2018)
Excerpt: The 5G filter story is being muddled.

Likely scenarios for Broadcom’s acquisition of Qualcomm. (November 5, 2017)
Excerpt: We don’t believe an acquisition of Qualcomm would herald a sea-change in Broadcom’s business model although it will upend the cellular modem industry.

What to expect on the quarter and in guidance for 4Q17. (October 26, 2017)
Excerpt: With so many moving parts in the mobile phone business and such large exposures to the big three OEMs (Apple, Samsung, Huawei), it’s often difficult to forecast hits and misses for Skyworks and Qorvo in individual quarters.

Big changes afoot in RF Semiconductors. (September 15, 2017)
Excerpt: Carrier’s quest for the 1Gbps phone is proving a boon to RF semiconductors. We just completed a series of technical discussions with leading companies and engineers in semiconductors and handsets, and have concluded the quest for a 1Gbps phone will be a boon for the leading RF semiconductor companies.

iPhone 8: What to expect for new bands. (September 11, 2017)
Excerpt: We’ve been asked to comment on a recent note postulating on the possibility of various bands showing up in Apple’s new phone. Having tracked RF filter development for many years, we are familiar with the history, progress and likelihood of deployment of all the bands mentioned in the note.

RF Semiconductors – What to expect for the RF stocks with Apple’s upcoming phone release. (July 7, 2017)
Excerpt: We’ve fielded several questions about variations in RF content by SKU, with most investors expecting three new models in September: upgrades to iPhone 7 and iPhone 7S, and a new high-end flagship, iPhone 8. We expect RF content gains in all models.

RF Semiconductors – Trends for 2017. (January 18, 2017)
Excerpt: We are highly confident that content will increase in 2017 at all the major handset groups: Apple, Samsung, China Inc. (top 10 Chinese OEMs), and China white-box (MediaTek, QRD, Spreadtrum). The largest percentage increase will almost certainly be in China white-box phones where MediaTek is accelerating its move to PADs.

RF Semiconductors – Even if iPhone’s release schedule is stretched (unlikely) it will have no bearing on RF. (June 4, 2016)
Excerpt: How can Apple stretch its phone release schedule to three years when it doubled the models and halved its time-to-market for iPhone in 2016? A news report out of Asia suggests Apple will extend the revamp schedule for iPhone from two to three years because of slowing demand. While this is certainly possible, we don’t believe it’s likely…

iPhone 6S: Teardown analysis. (September 25, 2015)
Excerpt: Total RF content up ~25% y/y for iPhone 6S. The teardown photos published last night confirm our forecast of a higher overall RF content from an increase in the number of LTE bands, a move to MIMO in the Wi-Fi section and larger, more complex diversity receive modules. The final word on how much all of this is worth will have to wait until the quarterly reports but discussions throughout 2015 suggest total additional spending will be in the $4.00 range, bringing iPhone 6S to about $24 in total RF content.

RF Semiconductors - The Ten Most Common Fallacies about the RF TAM. (September 22, 2014)
Excerpt: #1: MMPAs- Multi band amplifiers will accelerate price erosion and destroy the market. The arrival of multi mode amplifiers (MMPA) in 2010 did drive down pricing, but only on a per-band basis, and then only in high-band count devices; they had no impact on ASPs for PAMs, PADs, FEMIDs or filters…

iPhone 6 – A Detailed Teardown Analysis. (September 19, 2014)
Excerpt: Apple’s philosophy of minimum SKUs pushes total RF content up again. Contrary to what we thought two years ago, rather than segment its phones by region to reduce BOM costs, Apple has taken the opposite path, and decreased the number of RF SKUs to two with iPhone 6. This has increased the number of bands, as well as the complexity and cost per phone. Even if the unthinkable occurs and unit volumes are flat y/y, total dollars spent on RF by Apple will increase about 30% on higher content alone.

RF Semiconductors – A thorough look into the RF Content of the iPhone 6. (August 11, 2014)
Excerpt: We believe that the iPhone 6 will have about $17 in RF content and that Avago will be the big winner. Our analysis suggests $16 - $18 in RF content for Apple’s new phone, lower than our previous forecast of $18 - $19, because we no longer expect envelope tracking (ET) to be used in the new phone due to the problems experienced with Qualcomm’s ET device (QFE11xx).

A Field Guide to Filters (September 9, 2013)
Description: A meticulous 61-page primer explaining filter fundamentals (cost, insertion loss, temperature drift, distortion, and more), summarizing duplex filter products (front end modules, power amplifier duplexers, antenna filter modules), and comparing BAW vs SAW technologies.

Understanding Disparities in the Food Chain’s Guidance for iPhone 5S. (July 27, 2013)
Excerpt: The stark differences in September 2013 period guidance between many of the vendors supplying parts to iPhone 5S has heightened concerns over share loss, slow demand and delays in the release of Apple’s next phone. Of particular concern is the huge difference between Triquint’s blow-out guidance and Qualcomm’s short-fall.

RF TAM Analysis: A Detailed Look at Spending on RF Components for Mobile Devices (May 21, 2012)
Description: An in-depth 29-page report with detailed discussions of unit growth versus content compression, 2G to 3G conversion, High Density Amplifiers, and accelerating price erosion in commoditized devices.

Estimates for phone demand in 2011 are too low. (December 13, 2010)
Excerpt: Phone growth could well exceed 20% y/y in 2011. Despite what appears to be a robust recovery in handsets, sell-in remains insufficient to satisfy the pent-up demand induced by three years of economic weakness. At 15%, the replacement rate for mobile phones hit a ten year low in 2009 after averaging 22% for the previous eight years.

Android's opportunity to jump ahead of iTunes (July 8, 2010)
Excerpt: Next generation music platform is the major battle in the smartphone wars over the next 12 months. Last week's announcement that Google is activating 160K Android devices per day (a run rate that exceeds 14M per quarter), demonstrates Android’s ability to attract new users when combined with focused carrier marketing. Clearing that hurdle, the next test will be "stickiness"; the platform’s ability to retain users through several generations of replacements, as well as entice them to purchase secondary devices such as tablets and set top boxes.

Zeitgeist: A cautionary look at the world’s appetite for handsets. (June 19, 2010)
Excerpt: The recession is in check, worldwide sales of handsets are up, demand for mobile semiconductors is booming and OEM inventory in the April reports remained below normal; everything seems to be going great so why are we so worried? Our growing apprehension stems from a slew of data points that individually may not mean much but in aggregate seem to spell trouble.