Market Trends of RF Front End Module Industry
RF Filters to Witness Significant Growth
- Radiofrequency (RF) filters are widely used in the communication industry to eliminate white noise interference when receiving and transferring data across various channels. These filters are often employed in operating fields, such as television broadcasting, wireless communication, and radios operating from medium to high frequencies. This is done to provide reliable, error-free, and appropriate communication from one end to the other. Band-reject, high-pass, band-pass, and low-pass filters are the four types of RF filters.
- RF filters are used with radio receivers to ensure that only the appropriate frequencies are broadcasted, filtering out undesirable bands of frequencies. They are a crucial component of wireless technology. These filters are built to function at frequencies ranging from medium to extremely high, such as megahertz and gigahertz. Due to their working feature, they are most commonly employed in equipment like broadcast radio, wireless communications, and television.
- Mobile computing devices are becoming more popular among mobile users and business travelers who need constant mobility and connection. Consumers use these gadgets for various tasks, including accessing social media applications, surfing the web, reading news, and checking emails. The growing internet penetration rate and the availability of high data rates at affordable speeds are driving the demand for mobile computing devices.
- Network traffic is increasing exponentially, owing to the growing use of mobile computing devices. The proliferation of mobile computing devices (such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops) with increased capabilities is driving internet bandwidth. The increased need for new RF functionalities in smartphones and tablets has resulted from incorporating advanced wireless technologies, such as LTE and Wi-Fi.
- Furthermore, RF filters play an essential function in the cell phone environment. Mobile phones, for example, require a particular number of bands to function effectively. Without the right RF filter, the various bands cannot coexist simultaneously. This will result in the rejection of certain bands, such as the Wi-Fi, public safety, and global navigation satellite system (GNSS). RF filters are crucial because they allow all bands to coexist simultaneously.
- The increasing demand for 5G smartphones will further boost the demand for RF filters. According to GSMA, the 5G adoption rate as a share of mobile connections in Canada will reach 49% by 2025 from 8% in 2021.
Asia-Pacific to Witness Major Growth
- The Asia-Pacific is expected to witness significant growth. The advancement in consumer electronics and growing defense equipment requirements with the considerable growth of major emerging economies, such as China, India, and South Korea, will further boost the demand for the RF component market.
- The flourishing Integrated Circuit (IC) industry, expanding the SOI ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific, and increasing the use of SOI in IoT applications act as growth opportunities for the RF Front End Module (RFFE). According to Forbes, the number of IoT devices will surpass 3.5 billion by 2023, with Asia leading the highest market share. By 2023, Northeast Asia will be a market for more than 2.2 billion devices.
- For data transmission over 2G, 3G, and 4G/ Long-term Evolution (LTE), mobile devices require dedicated front-end modules (FEMs). FEMs use RF-SOI chips, which integrate switches, power amplifiers, antenna tuning components, power management units, and filters on a single platform for IoT applications. Hence, this caters to the market growth in the region.
- Further, increasing the production of vehicles in the Asia-Pacific is expected to drive the demand for compact dual-band RF front-end modules for global positioning system (GPS) operating in the L1-band (1574.42-1576.42 MHz) and satellite digital audio radio system (SDARS) operating in the S-band (2320-2345 MHz. This, in turn, may boost the market in the region. China is the largest maker of electric vehicles and leads with the highest level of EV uptake over the projection period. By 2030, the share of EVs in new vehicle sales is estimated to reach 57% across all road transport modes (i.e., two-wheelers, cars, buses, and trucks).
- Furthermore, as front-end modules are essential to many wireless applications, such as base stations and 5G smartphones, China's massive capital investment project designed to nurture the domestic semiconductor industry has rolled out its second funding phase. The project is scheduled for the next five years with a budget of YUAN 204.15 billion (USD 28.9 billion). By addressing RF front-end modules, Huawei creates an opportunity to ponder areas that need attention for developing the necessary technologies, designs, and IPs, possibly expected to begin designing a whole integrated module system in China. This further penetrates future growth for the market.