Taiwan suppliers of compound semiconductor devices are poised to gain significant growth momentum from the increasing market demand for radio frequency (RF) and power amplifier (PA) components along with the efforts of chipmakers to roll out related solutions to support 5G devices such as smartphones, various IoT (Internet of Things), and base stations in the second half of 2018 and 2019 before 5G technologies and applications start to be commercialized in 2020, according to industry sources.

The upcoming 5G mobile communication era will not only witness the extension of frequency bands for the 5G handheld devices to the low range of sub-6GHz, but will also see sharp increases in demand for high-frequency, high-power compound semiconductor components such as RF, PA, integrated millimeter wave (mmWave) and GaN (gallium nitride) devices to support 5G infrastructure deployments, especially base stations, the sources said.

While worldwide telecom operators are aggressively proceeding with 5G deployments, the sources continued, Taiwan chipmaker MediaTek and suppliers of GaAs epi wafer and other compound semiconductor suppliers as Win Semiconductor, Advanced Wireless Semiconductor, Visual Photonics Expitaxy, Global Communications Semiconductors and IntelliEPI have directly or indirectly tapped into the supply chains of China telecom operators including China Mobile, and they are expecting significant business opportunities from tender projects presented by China's telecom carriers.

Among them, MediaTek has joined a 5G terminal pioneer program initiated by China Mobile and is set to roll out is first-generation 5G baseband chipset solutions for trial run in the second half of 2018. The solutions will be designed based on the 3GPP Rel-15 5G NR standards to support sub-6GHz and mmWave frequency ranges, standalone and non-standalone networks, high performance user equipment and other key 5G technologies.

Meanwhile, Global Communications Semiconductor is planning to acquire 6-inch wafer foundries to support fabrication of its InP (indium phosphide), HBT (heterojunction bipolar transistor) and pHEMT (pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor) devices, so as to better to meet huge demand from 5G base stations.

In China, Huawei has released Balong 5G01 terminal chipset that can support 5G across all frequency bands, including sub-6GHz and mmWave, for applications to smartphones, IoT and automotive platforms. The company is now working with more than 30 of the world's top telecom carriers to further its 5G research, and is slated to launch its first 5G smartphone model in the fourth quarter of 2018. Taiwan-based Advanced Wireless Semiconductor will have a chance of benefiting from Huawei's deployments in 5G and 3D sensors by supplying VCSEL devices.

By: DocMemory
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