Taiwan-based GaAs foundry houses, including Win Semiconductors, Advanced Wireless Semiconductor (AWSC) and Visual Photonics Epitaxy (VPEC), are set to land more orders from Chinese power amplifier (PA) suppliers, according to industry sources.
The current local top-two 4G PA suppliers in China, Vanchip Technologies and RDA Microelectronics (Unisoc), are poised to venture into the 5G PA segment shortly, said the sources.
Other Chinese 4G PA vendors, including Lansus Technologies and Radrock Tech, are reportedly to begin rolling out midrange GaAs-based 5G PAs and RF-FEM products in the fourth quarter of 2021, added the sources.
Not only brand vendors such as Skyworks but also most Chinese PA suppliers have been relying on Taiwan-based GaAs-based foundry houses to fabricate their PA chips, noted the sources.
Bolstered by increased orders from Vanchip and RDA, GaAs foundry house AWSC saw its June revenue grow 4.5% sequentially and 39.41% on year to NT$396 million (US$14.26 million).
For the first half of 2021, AWSC posted revenues of NT$2.216 billion, increasing 33.95% from a year earlier.
AWSC will roll out 13,000 wafers for PAs in July before ramping up to 17,000 pieces in September and 20,000 by year-end 2021. The company has drawn out plans to boost its PA wafer capacity to 25,000 a month in the first half of 2022 to meet the growing demand for 4G/5G PAs and Wi-Fi 6/6E PAs, according to industry sources.
Article translated by Steve Shen
