In a recent market report released by market research firm iSupply, the overall market for wireless semiconductors grew 22 percent in 2003 to $16.4 billion. The report covered semiconductors used in myriad cellular and cordless handsets and mobile communications infrastructure equipments, as well as in wireless LAN (WLAN) products. Interestingly, the report indicates that the top five suppliers accounted for more than 50 percent of the total revenue. Continuing its dominance in baseband ICs for mobile handset, Texas Instruments emerged as the number-one player in this market. Qualcomm managed to maintain its second position due to its hold on CDMA handset market. And Infineon made impressive gains to jump to the third position in iSupply’s report, surpassing STMicroelectronics and Freeescale Semiconductor, formerly Motorola Semiconductor.

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In the mobile handsets arena, RF transceiver devices last year showed an 11 percent surge, reaching $2.6 billion in revenues in 2003. The study identifies Qualcomm as a leading supplier of RF transceivers to this market. Although a majority of the transceivers were based on SiGe biCMOS technology, RF CMOS and silicon biCMOS also accounted for a small portion. Particularly, RF CMOS transceivers have increased their share of this market from 4.5 percent in 2002 to 6.9 percent last year, as per the research firm’s study.

“RF transceiver chips are moving in the zero-IF direction for the mobile handsets,” noted Scott Smyser, iSupply’s senior analyst for Frequency Control, RF & Wireless. “Lots of synthesis functions are being integrated on these chips to cut discrete component count and reduce overall cost.” Similarly, the consumption of power amplifiers (PAs) used in the mobile handsets surged by 23 percent in 2003 to $1.5 billion. RF Micro Devices, Skyworks and Renesas were identified as the top three suppliers with 80 percent of the PA market in the handset space. Compared to other transistor types, gallium arsenide (GaAs)-based heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) continue to dominate the PAs used in these applications as they improved their share of the market from 42.6 percent in 2002 to 47.1 percent in 2003. Advances in GaAs pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistors (pHEMTs) continue to push the technology forward. According to iSupply, Agilent has gained some ground with its GaAs E-pHEMT transistor solutions, which are primarily used in GSM based handsets.