Phone antenna tuners are forecasted to reach 1.8B units per year

Date: 05/11/2013
Strategy Analytics has reported the shipment of antenna tuners to undergo a phenomenal growth through 2018 with new multi-band LTE devices. Strategy Analytics has forecasted Phone Antenna Tuners to Reach 1.8 Billion Units per Year with LTE.

Christopher Taylor, author of the report and Director of SA's RF & Wireless Components (RFWC) market research service, noted that "RF Micro Devices has a strong lead in the cellular antenna tuner market as a consequence of their strengths in RF switches, and their long history of working closely with leading handset OEMs with a variety of RF front-end designs and antenna performance needs. Skyworks Solutions and Peregrine Semiconductor also offer compelling RF switch-based tuning solutions, and should do well in the market. The future of alternative technologies such as RF MEMS and BST tuners from other suppliers remains less certain."

Eric Higham, Director, GaAs & Compound Semiconductors at Strategy Analytics, stated that "Gallium arsenide-based switches lead in cellphone tuning applications today, but this is changing rapidly with wider adoption of CMOS silicon-on-insulator-based solutions from RFMD, Skyworks, Peregrine and others, especially for antenna impedance matching, which we expect to play a crucial role in enabling higher data-rate, multi-band LTE mobile devices in the future.