JW Insights: China's RF front-end chip companies are rising rapidly

By Li Panpan

China's RF front-end chip companies are rising rapidly, with an established competition pattern in the smartphone market. And they still need to work hard on technologies for filters, high-density packaging, and high-performance power amplifiers. These are the key points of a report on China’s RF frond-end chip sector by JW Insights analyst Zhao Yi. More summaries from the report.

The global smartphone market is sluggish in 2022, and the Chinese smartphone market is worse with a prolonged replacement cycle and insufficient purchasing power. In the next 2-3 years, China's smartphone sales may remain at 270-280 million units annually.

The China-produced front-end chips are used widely in both low-end and flagship Chinese smartphones. The global market share of China's RF front-end chip companies has reached more than 10%. If Apple, Samsung, and other manufacturers are excluded, the localization rate of RF front-end devices in China has reached more than 25%.

The Chinese companies have occupied a large market in Phase2/Phase5N PA and discrete switch low-noise amplifiers. They are catching up in fields like LPAMiF/PAMiF and DiFEM/LFEM, and they still lag behind in LPAMiD /PAMiD and high-performance filters like TC-SAW and IHP-SAW.

With the continuous improvement of China’s PA module companies and technology breakthroughs in filter companies, it will be a trend for PA and filter companies to integrate in the future. It is expected that Chinese PAMiD will be gradually introduced in 2022, with a certain scale of shipments in 2023.