According to new research by Strategy Analytics (Boston, MA), demand for 5G user equipment (UE) will heavily stimulate the market for RF radio components. As outlined in the new Strategy Analytics RF & Wireless Components report entitled, “Cellular UE Radio Components Forecast 2020 - 2024: 5G Beyond the Baseband,” the highest demand will be for advanced radio chipsets and complex RF front ends capable of supporting the new sub-6 and mmWave 5G bands.
Stephen Entwistle, VP of Strategic Technologies at Strategy Analytics, commented, “With 5G, radio solutions will continue to move to higher chip-count system-in-package (SiP) modules that encompass multiple technologies. This favors the largest chipset and RF front-end suppliers with the biggest R&D budgets and widest product portfolios, among these Hisilicon, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung LSI, Murata, Skyworks and Qorvo.”
The new report takes a detailed look at user equipment shipments and bills of material by air interface (GSM-GPRS-EDGE, UMTS, CDMA, LTE, 5G etc.), examining recent history and providing a forecast to 2024 for market revenue and unit shipments of cellular radio frequency components, including basebands, transceivers, millimeter-wave modules, RF filters, duplexers and multiplexers, power amps, LNA, switches, drain modulators and antenna tuners.
This is the 18th consecutive year that Strategy Analytics has published its cellular component forecast.
As explained by Christopher Taylor, Director of RF & Wireless Components at Strategy Analytics, and author of the report, “More than twelve analysts contribute to the forecast starting with shipments and forecasts for cellular feature phones and smartphones, cellular M2M modules, cellular-enabled tablets, routers, and other cellular devices from [our] Wireless Devices, IoT Ecosystem, Automotive and Intelligent Home practices. With this system information, our components team then considers radio architectures and historical component prices and demand trends, to arrive at what we believe to be realistic estimates and projections for the market that line up with historical supplier product line revenues.”
For additional detail on power amp front-end module shipments by type, see Strategy Analytics' “Cellular UE PA Forecast 2019 - 2024: 5G to the Rescue” report.
For additional detail on the analyst's baseband processor shipment forecast, see its “Cellular Baseband Processor Forecast 2019 - 2024: 5G On a Fast Track” report.
For estimated quarterly shipments and share for baseband processors, see Strategy Analytics' “Baseband Market Share Tracker Q3 2019: 5G Shipments Doubling Each Quarter” report.