Skyworks Sees 5G ‘Inflection Point’ for Clearing ‘Digital Traffic Jam’
A looming “digital traffic jam” requires “an inflection point in global communication standards, and that's 5G,” said Skyworks CEO Liam Griffin on a Monday earnings call. The chipmaker thinks 5G “will be a key enabler to a massive rollout of…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
IoT,” said Griffin. There are roughly 5 billion smartphones, he noted, and "to make the leap to 5G, system architectures will require significantly more powerful connectivity engines to ensure the intense performance challenges are realized. This upgrade wave will create an enormous growth catalyst for the entire smartphone ecosystem.” There’s "definitely going to be some early elements of 5G stepping into this market by 2018 into 2019,” he said: “It will take a while” before 5G becomes “fully implemented,” though migration to 5G “is on the road map.” There's “a lot of work that we can do in 4G to grow our content and grow our business by populating existing customers with new technology," he said. If smartphones rise to 25 billion by 2020, "we're going to need a new network to deliver those frequencies and deliver that data,” said Griffin. That will create “another opportunity for connectivity,” whether it will be Wi-Fi, or ZigBee or cellular, he said.