Qorvo’s future is not just about radio frequency!

Depend onRFA new company formed by the merger of MD and TriQuint in 2015QorvoIt is a well-deserved giant in the radio frequency market. From the company's stock market chart, we can see that thanks to the company's outstanding products, Qorvo's stock price climbed to a historical high of $116 at the end of last year, an increase of more than 200% from the lowest point of $36 in 2016. Although due to the epidemic, the company's stock price dropped to more than 70 US dollars in March this year. But Qorvo's stock price has recently climbed back to $103. This was mainly due to the company's financial performance in the most recent quarter.

According to the company's financial report, Qorvo's revenue in fiscal year 2020 ended March 28, 2020 was US$3.2392 billion, an increase of 4.8% from fiscal year 2019. According to statistics, Qorvo's gross profit in fiscal year 2020 was as high as 40.8%. To achieve such results, working closely with the companyradio frequency, especially in5GRF performance is inseparable from performance.

Consolidate the old forces

Official information shows that Qorvo, which was formed through the merger of RFMD and TriQuint, combined the complementary product portfolios of both parties, especially power.amplifierAmplifier (PA),Power managementintegrated circuit (PMIC), antenna control solutions, based onswitchQorvo's products and high-quality filters are the company's RF "cornerstone" for future needs. Qorvo also uses these products to deliver the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of high-performance mobile device solutions to customers. It is precisely because of this merger that the new Qorvo has the ability to improve the quality of services provided by the infrastructure and aerospace industries, and can provide advanced solutions for other markets and applications.gallium nitride(GaN) solutions. The above is what Qorvo is preparing for the rapidly developing 5G market. Looking back at 2015, 4G development was in full swing, but many manufacturers have begun to invest in 5G research and development. Because the new standard has the characteristics of high speed, low latency and high frequency, it will inevitably bring greater challenges to the RF front-end. To some extent, this is also a major incentive for the establishment of Qorvo. Let’s look at the mobile phone first. Judging from the current 5G development, many countries and regions use different 5G frequency bands, which requires mobile phones to support more frequency bands. In addition, the high data rate of 5G also requires mobile phones to be equipped with more antennas. It also promotes multi-band carrier aggregation andMIThe introduction of MO and other technologies. These new needs have triggered the need for radio frequency. And Qorvo leads BAW andSAW filter, gallium arsenide PA, SOI antenna tuners and switches can meet the diverse needs of mobile terminals. It is worth mentioning that because Qorvo also has its own factory, its experience in product production and packaging can help them create some smaller modular products to solve the mobile phone design challenges caused by thinning and lightness of mobile phones and multiple cameras in the 5G era. Secondly, coming to the base station, because in addition to the Sub-6Ghz frequency band, 5G also has millimeter wave frequency bands, but no matter which frequency band it is, this has been significantly improved compared with previous network standards. This not only brings about radio frequency performance requirements. Like the mobile terminal, the base station terminal also has the introduction of technologies such as antenna arrays, beam forming, and carrier aggregation. This results in higher-performance radio frequency devices, among which GaN has become the choice of developers. Relevant data shows that applying GaN devices to millimeter wave 5G base stations can reduce power loss by 40%, reduce die space by 94%, and also bring 80% savings in cost. And this is what Qorvo is good at. Because it has so many leading RF devices and technologies, this has helped Qorvo achieve good performance in the past few years. Considering that the market has a positive outlook for 5G and the radio frequency market also has promising prospects, we can foresee Qorvo's future growth opportunities in this field. Relevant statistics also show that by 2022, the overall size of the radio frequency market will exceed US$20 billion, especially 5G radio frequency, which is growing rapidly.

In fact, in addition to the above businesses, the widespread demand for WiFi 6 and the Internet of Things has also made a significant contribution to Qorvo's performance. In order to enhance the company's strength in radio frequency. Qorvo wields the acquisition stick. In 2016, Qorvo announced the acquisition of GreenPeak, a leading ultra-low power, short-range RF communications technology company. The Netherlands-based company is globally recognized for IEEE 802.15.4 andZigBeeOne of the market leaders for smart homesdata communicationand IoT provide a wealth of semiconductor products and software technologies. With this acquisition, Qorvo complements its market-leading high-power RF product portfolio with innovative ultra-low-power, short-range wireless personal area network (WPAN) SoCs, ZigBee andBluetoothsolution. Let Qorvo take the lead in the Internet of Things market. In October 2019, Qorvo acquired Cavendish Kinetics, the world's leading provider of high-performance RF MEMS antenna tuning application technology. It is understood that Qorvo has been a major strategic investor in Cavendish Kinetics since 2015. The RF MEMS equipment developed by the latter is used to tune the main antenna and diversity antenna of smartphones in low, medium and high frequency bands, thereby bringing stronger signals and higher data rates. "The addition of Cavendish Kinetics enables us to establish a market leadership position in antenna tuning," said Eric Creviston, president of mobile products at Qorvo. "Several of the world's leading smartphone vendors have achieved significant improvements in antenna performance by using CK's RF MEMS technology to reduce losses and improve linearity. Qorvo will build on the excellent work CK has done as they optimize and expand the technology to other applications such as infrastructure." This year, Qorvo completed the acquisition of Custom MMIC. As an important player in the RF and microwave MMIC fields, the latter has extensive experience in developing MMICs with frequencies up to 70 Ghz. Their addition also enhances Qorvo's strength in GaAs and GaN RF products in the aerospace field. While the market is changing, Qorvo has strengthened its position in the RF industry through these acquisitions.

Open up new markets

What is certain is that radio frequency will be the cornerstone of Qorvo, whether in the past or in the future. There is no doubt that. But as a company with profound technical accumulation and keen insight. Qorvo has seen new growth opportunities for the company in addition to radio frequency, and has been actively involved in them. The Internet of Things is the most important one. GreenPeak mentioned aboveTeThe acquisition of chnologies is Qorvo's first major bet in this market. Through this transaction, they want to enter the Internet of Things connection market. Last year, they acquired another company called Active-Semi. One target targeted by this transaction is the power supply market for IoT devices. According to data, Active-Semi, founded in Silicon Valley, is a rapidly emerging leader in the power management and intelligent motor drive integrated chip (IC) market. The company's portfolio of analog and mixed-signal SoCs provides scalable core platforms for charging systems, power delivery systems and embedded digital control systems for industrial, commercial and consumer applications. In particular, the PACs and programmable analog ICs it provides can greatly reduce solution size and cost, improve system reliability, and shorten system development time. The support it brings to the surging number of smart home (an application branch of the Internet of Things) device market is obvious. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of Active-Semi's "treasure library."

Qorvo President and CEO Bob Bruggeworth once said that through the acquisition of Active-Semi, Qorvo will increase the IDP products provided to existing customers (including 5G base stations, active phased arrays, automotive and IoT) and expand its business scope into new high-growth power management markets. Qorvo believes there will be substantial opportunities by leveraging the company's global scale, sales channels and customer relationships to accelerate the adoption of Active-Semi's innovative analog/mixed-signal solutions in multiple markets. "

From his introduction, we learned that Qorvo has recruited Active-Semi. In addition to the Internet of Things, it also sees the opportunities it brings to the 5G, industrial, data center and automotive markets. Taking 5G as an example, the new standard not only brings radio frequency requirements, but also faces unprecedented new challenges in base station power supply, which is what Active-Semi is committed to solving. As for the specific approach, Qorvo said that if power management, PAC and RF can be effectively combined and the power supply is used to give RF life, it can provide the industry with more efficient and higher-quality solutions. Of course, Qorvo's extensive customer base will also be an important reliance for the company to expand new business. After completing the acquisition of analog and mixed-signal SoC suppliers, Qorvo announced the acquisition of Decawave this year without stopping. This is mainly focused on the UWB chip market introduced by Apple in its new generation of flagship smartphones. The so-called UWB, which is Ultra Wideband (Chinese ultra-wideband), is actually not a new thing. As early as 1960, the concept of UWB was proposed, and in 1973, the first UWB system patent was granted. As a non-traditional communication system, UWB uses nanosecond-level non-sinusoidal narrow pulses to transmit data as an information carrier, which allows it to have high positioning accuracy, strong security and anti-interference, high green space for emission, high multipath resolution and good system confidentiality. Precisely because of its many advantages, UWB is regarded as the priority choice for smart homes, augmented reality and indoor navigation. After Apple entered this market, industry attention has been unprecedentedly high. Qorvo also took a fancy to this business opportunity and acquired Decawave, the leader in the UWB chip industry. Qorvo stated that Decawave is an industry pioneer in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology and a provider of UWB solutions for mobile, automotive and IoT applications. From its founding in 2007 to its acquisition by Qorvo this year, Decawave has served in more than 40 different vertical markets, from smartphones todrone) deployed more than 8 million chipsets. The company's pulse radio UWB technology can achieve positioning services accurate to a few centimeters with extremely low latency, making it an important partner for customers entering this market. In Qorvo's view, based on the pioneering work of the Decawave team, coupled with Qorvo's own experience in the RF front-end and its large customer base, the powerful combination of the two can embrace the huge new opportunities brought by the expansion of UWB into new markets such as mobile, automotive, industrial and consumer IoT fields. Judging from the development trends of the integrated circuit industry in the past few years, acquisitions are undoubtedly an effective way to quickly enter new tracks. Because unlike in the past, the terminal market is developing rapidly and changing rapidly. For relevant suppliers, if they cannot quickly occupy a priority position on the track, they may be washed up on the beach at any time. As a company with extensive experience in this area, Qorvo has stored enough "ammunition" for the future.

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