On July 13, the Tuoji Industry Research Institute, a subsidiary of DRAMeXchange consulting, stated that under the double impact of Sino-US trade friction and the COVID-19 epidemic, the revenue of related RF front-end device IDM makers and manufacturing foundries was affected, and in 2020 The decline in terminal demand for communications products has led to a shrinkage of the GaAs radio frequency front-end market. It is expected that the overall revenue for this year will be 5.793 billion US dollars, a decrease of 3.8% compared with last year.

According to Wang Zunmin, an analyst at Tuoji Industry Research Institute, according to the needs of communication products, RF front-end components can be mainly divided into PA, LNA, and Filter according to different characteristics. In the classification of RF front-end components, GaAs compound semiconductors are particularly suitable for PA components because of their high temperature resistance, wide usable frequency range, and low noise at high frequencies.

According to previous reports, the development of the domestic gallium arsenide foundry is also affected by the epidemic and the US ban, but more constraints come from its own technical level. The current domestic gallium arsenide foundry is only Sanan integrated by Sanan Optoelectronics Haiwei Huaxin under Hite High-tech.

Affected by the Sino-US trade war, US IDM factory revenue from China has declined, but Chinese smartphone manufacturers still rely on importing products from these IDM companies. Therefore, the Tuoji Industry Research Institute believes that the US IDM can maintain the bottom line to a certain extent. In the first quarter of this year, Qorvo's revenue increased by 15.7% to US$788 million, while Skyworks' revenue decreased by 5.5% to US$766 million.

The report believes that with the acceleration of global 5G base station construction and the increase in the proportion of 5G mobile phones in the annual production of smart phones by manufacturers, the revenue of IDM major RF front-end manufacturers may rebound from the bottom in 2021. At the same time, some foundries may also benefit from this.