Mitsubishi Electric and Toshiba gains ground among GaAs device manufacturers

August 22, 2006

Strategy Analytics has released its annual ranking of the world's top GaAs device manufacturers, detailing the movers and shakers in 2005. Eudyna Devices, Sony and NEC slipped out of the top ten in 2005, while Mitsubishi Electric and Toshiba gained market share. Mitsubishi Electric was the Japanese market leader in the 2005 GaAs device market and saw significant growth for its MMIC business as it led supply of GaAs Power Amplifiers to the Japanese 3G cellular handset market.

Seven of the top ten GaAs device manufacturers in 2005 were based in North America, with the usual suspects being joined by the fabless company, Hittite RF Micro Devices, Skyworks and TriQuint remain entrenched as market leaders, accounting for 52 percent of the total GaAs device merchant market.

"2006 will bring some changes as well. None of the European GaAs device manufacturers held a top ten position in 2005, yet we expect Filtronic to climb into this top ten GaAs device manufacturer ranking in 2006," observes Asif Anwar, Director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductor Technologies service. "The Asia-Pacific foundries will also maintain growth in 2006 and 2007. Demand for foundry services in some cases is actually coming from the traditional GaAs device companies themselves, many of whom are choosing to outsource excess GaAs device production rather than investing it in upgrading existing facilities."

"Despite these movements, we believe that North American players will continue to cement their dominance of the GaAs device market in 2006, since they supply the majority of GaAs devices to the strategically important handset market, as well as to other markets utilizing GaAs devices," maintains Stephen Entwistle, Vice President of the Strategic Technologies Practice at Strategy Analytics.

The "GaAs Device Vendor Market Share 2005: North America" and "GaAs Device Vendor Market Share 2005: Asia Pacific and Europe" reports are currently available.

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