Skyworks Solutions Inc of Woburn, MA, USA (which manufactures analog and mixed-signal semiconductors) says that, for $76.5m, it has acquired the remaining 34% stake that it did not already own in the filter joint venture it created with Japan's Panasonic Corp in 2014. The acquisition is not expected to impact Skyworks' consolidated financial statements, as operations have been consolidated with Skyworks' financial statements since the date of the initial joint venture.
Skyworks says that at the core of the joint venture was Panasonic's engineering and process talent, expertise in filter design and leading-edge products, as well as 412 fundamental filter patents and patent applications for surface acoustic wave (SAW) and temperature-compensated (TC) SAW devices. In August 2015, Skyworks expanded its production capacity with the addition of a 405,000ft2 facility in Osaka to help meet the growing demand for highly integrated solutions leveraging filter technology. To date, total production has exceeded more than 2 billion filters.
"With this acquisition, Skyworks has strengthened its leadership position as one of the world's largest providers of high performance, integrated-filter solutions," reckons Skyworks' president & CEO Liam K. Griffin. "Given the proliferation of frequency bands, the addition of LTE capabilities and market demand for always-on connectivity, the need for filters has never been higher," he adds. "Our strategic investment uniquely enables us to deliver end-to-end solutions for some of the fastest-growing and most demanding applications in the world requiring high-performance filter technology. Together with external partners, we are successfully addressing the low-, mid- and high-band performance requirements across premium smartphones and IoT applications."
According to a recent report from Research and Markets, the global radio frequency filter market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% during 2016-2020, and the rise in the number of frequency bands, modulation schemes and power amplifier modes to support increased mobile data traffic is resulting in high RF front-end complexity.
