News: Markets
21 May 2021
Cellular radio component market growing 8% annually through 2025
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the market for radio-frequency components used in cellular user equipment grew to an all-time high in 2020 and will continue to grow through 2025, according to the report ‘Cellular UE Radio Component Forecast 2021-2025: A Robust Future Post-COVID with 5G’ from the Strategy Analytics RF & Wireless Components service. The report details historical and expected sales in dollars and units by air interface and type of radio component, including baseband processors, RF transceivers, power amplifiers, RF filters, switches, antenna tuners, drain modulators, tuners and other radio-frequency front-end (RFFE) components.
“We predict that the cellular radio component market will grow 8% per year through 2025,” says report author Christopher Taylor, director of RF & Wireless Components. “In the wake of stagnating device shipment growth and to help counter increasing radio complexity with 5G, suppliers of RFFE component have continued to develop system-in-package modules with more capabilities, allowing companies to capture more RFFE content per design-win while making design and assembly of mobile phones easier for OEMs,” he adds.
“The on-going semiconductor shortages are likely to persist through 2022, validating strong underlying demand,” notes Sravan Kundojjala, associate director, Handset Component Technologies. “However, mobile phone OEMs face supply constraints that could keep them from reaching full upside device sales potential this year. Semiconductor foundries including TSMC, UMC, GlobalFoundries, SMIC, Samsung Foundry and compound semiconductor foundries have responded with efforts to increase capacity as quickly as possible,” he adds. “Strategy Analytics predicts that robust demand for both sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G RF components along with new 5G opportunities beyond smartphones will drive significant cellular radio component growth over the next few years.”
