In a recent report compiled by market research firm iSupply, the overall market for wireless semiconductors grew 22% in 2003. The report covered semiconductors used in myriad cellular and cordless handsets and mobile communications infrastructure equipment, as well as wireless LAN (WLAN) products. Semiconductor devices employed in WLAN equipment showed the biggest gain, improving by 63%. However, according to iSupply, this study does not include revenues from emerging applications such as broadband communications and Bluetooth, as well as other products like emergency radios, dispatch, marine radio and others.

Overall, the wireless applications-specific IC revenues surged 22 percent to $16.4 billion last year, with the top five suppliers accounting for more than 50 percent of the total revenue. Continuing its dominance in baseband ICs for mobile handsets, Texas Instruments emerged as the number one player in this market, according to iSupply's report. Qualcomm managed to maintain its second position due to its hold on CDMA handset market. Infineon made impressive gains to jump to number three, surpassing STMicroelectronics and Freeescale Semiconductor, formerly Motorola Semiconductor.

In the mobile handsets arena, RF transceiver devices last year showed an 11% rise, reaching $2.6 billion in revenues in 2003. The study identifies Qualcomm as a leading supplier of RF transceivers for 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% in 2002 to 6.9% in 2003, said iSupply's report.

“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,” he said.

For power amplifiers (PAs) for mobile handsets, the market share improved by 23% in 2003 to $1.5 billion. RF Micro Devices, Skyworks and Renesas were identified as the top three suppliers with 80% of the PA market in the handset space. Compared to other transistor types, gallium arsenide (GaAs)-based hetero-junction bipolar transistors (HBTs) continue to dominate the PAs used in this application as they improved their share of the market from 42.6% in 2002 to 47.1% in 2003. The study shows that GaAs pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistors (pHEMTs) also continue to make progress on this front. “For PAs, the trend is toward modules that incorporate onboard passive matching networks and control circuitry, and can handle multiple bands,” stated Smyser.

For more information, visit www.isupply.com.