The smartwatch market will rise at an 11% compound annual growth rate through 2024 to $14.57 billion, said a Friday Technavio report. Year-over-year growth in 2020 is forecast at 4.49%. Some 54% of smartwatch sales growth through the forecast period will come from North America. A key driver will be technology advances in the semiconductor market, it said.
High-tech companies spoke with FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff on Wireless Research Center of North Carolina studies on the interference risk posed by body-worn devices. The companies presented “measurements of signal attenuation caused by the human body related to proposed very-low-power device operation in the 6 GHz band and the difference between far-field body loss and on-body link loss measurements,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 18-295. The FCC is considering changes to accommodate use of the devices (see 2007280033). Representatives of Broadcom, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, NXP Semiconductors and Qualcomm were on the call. The Wi-Fi Alliance sought action in a call with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. “The Commission’s action opening the 6 GHz band for unlicensed operations has strengthened U.S. technological leadership while also prompting other countries to take similar actions,” the alliance said.
The commercialization of 5G is “progressing” well and on track to add “an estimated 190 million subscribers in 2020,” said Keysight Technologies CEO Ron Nersesian on a fiscal Q3 investor call Thursday. The company markets 5G test solutions and is making strategic investments in next-generation “semiconductor process technology” for 5G smartphones. Device design and development investments in 5G “continue to be strong, driven by the large-scale ramps in Asia,” said Nersesian. “As 5G deployment expands and ongoing innovations gain customer interest, we continue to see strength in R&D.” Keysight’s “end-to-end solutions for the 5G life cycle” for wired and wireless “are enabling the ecosystem to scale from product development to deployments,” he said. Its 5G platforms are in use at “all the leading test houses worldwide,” he said. That’s helping “rapid adoption” of open radio access network (ORAN) technologies, he said. The “bulk” of the 5G opportunity is “ahead of us, and millimeter-wave commercialization is “still in its early days,” said Nersesian. Keysight’s recently launched PathWave software suite “accelerates 5G design, simulation and verification workflows” that “speeds time to market,” he said. The 5G industry “continues to progress in a very strong manner,” said Satish Dhanasekaran, president of Keysight's Communications Solutions Group. “There have been some pushouts in some parts of the world, acceleration in others.” Keysight’s long-term 5G outlook “remains unchanged,” he said. “We look at it both from deployments and actually the number of devices that are going to be manufactured this year. So pretty strong from that point of view.” Keysight has “some strong drivers going” for its 5G business, including the ORAN toolkit it just launched “to enable developers there,” said Dhanasekaran. Though there isn't a “big player yet that's emerging” in ORAN, “there's a lot of customers,” he said. Dish Network bills itself as the only U.S. company building a 5G network to ORAN standards, and doing so from "a clean sheet of paper" (see 2008070046). The stock closed 6.8% lower Friday at $95.88.
Cree views 5G as a “multiyear expansion, with major traction coming,” said CEO Gregg Lowe on a Tuesday investor call. The company supplies silicon-carbide RF and power chips for 5G infrastructure applications. “There have been a number of recent announcements coming out of Asia pointing towards growing 5G momentum in that region. While the global pandemic has further delayed some rollouts in other regions, we continue to be well positioned to support this global expansion.” Cree stopped shipping to Huawei “for the better part of a year” after the Commerce Department’s export ban took effect, said Lowe: “We have no Huawei revenue plans in any of our future projections or forecasts.” Any “large impact” from Huawei, “we've basically taken it out of the picture,” he said. “We have developed good relationships with other players around the world and are repurposing the technology that we had developed for Huawei for those customers.” Lowe concedes the “Huawei situation was a pretty significant setback for us,” he said. “But we've adjusted our plans, we've adjusted our focus to go after non-Huawei customers.”
Qualcomm’s victory before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals strengthens the hand of patent holders like Huawei, which could create national security risks, tech industry officials and antitrust attorneys said in interviews. A Qualcomm proponent said the FTC shouldn’t seek an appeal in a case that would put “more bad law on the books against” the agency (see 2008110065).
Open radio access networks (ORANs), the topic of an upcoming FCC forum (see 2008180012), dominated the discussion during a Qualcomm-sponsored webinar Tuesday. Dean Brenner, Qualcomm senior vice president-spectrum strategy and technology policy, sees promise in ORAN. “It’s going to accelerate the 5G rollout dramatically,” he said: “It’s going to lower the costs for deploying. … It brings in a whole new group of players.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's 2-1 ruling Friday knocking down two FCC conditions on Charter Communications' buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks didn’t get to the merits (see 2008140018). It nonetheless could have implications for future consumer challenges of regulations, said cable attorneys and appellant the Competitive Enterprise Institute in interviews. Industry and public interest lawyers disagree how the ruling will affect a parallel FCC proceeding on sunsetting Charter/TWC/BHN conditions (see 2007230015).
“Sell-in” demand in the computing segment at Alpha & Omega Semiconductor (AOS) was “OK” for fiscal Q4 ended June 30, said Executive Vice President Stephen Chang on a Tuesday investor call. But the increased PC sell-through was “quite dramatic,” due to widespread COVID-19 work-from-home and remote-learning, he said. AOS supplies power semiconductors for laptops, LCD TVs, smartphones and other applications and can be a bellwether of consumer tech demand. Many AOS customers that paused production in calendar Q1 through the pandemic’s factory lockdowns “were catching up in the June quarter,” said Chang. “End demand” in computing remained strong through the quarter, “and we were able to meet it with ramping supply” from the fab in Chongqing, China, he said. Revenue in the consumer segment increased 37.5% sequentially and 31.7% year over year, said Chang. “COVID-driven home-sheltering boosted sales of gaming, TVs and home appliances, enabling those segments to achieve healthy growth,” he said. AOS expects double-digit growth in its consumer segment for the September quarter, “driven by home entertainment, gaming and TVs,” said Chang. COVID-19 robbed 2020 of much of its “normal seasonality,” said Chang. Work-from-home and remote-learning mandates are putting the computing segment on a “very healthy” track for the September quarter, said Chang. “We really need to wait and see how demand changes, but right now, it still looks strong.” Smartphone OEMs didn't “pull back production until the June quarter,” said Chang. “But then coming into the September quarter, they're actually starting up production pretty heavily again in anticipation of possibly another factory shutdown” for the next wave of COVID-19 cases in the fall, he said. The stock closed 21.4% higher Wednesday at $13.88.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai declared “massive victory” Wednesday as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upheld the agency’s 2018 wireless infrastructure orders on small cells and local moratoria. Industry also applauded the court for rejecting local government claims that the FCC inappropriately preempted their authority in the federal agency’s effort to streamline 5G deployment. The 9th Circuit fully upheld the agency’s one-touch, make-ready (OTMR) order.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Qualcomm Tuesday in an FTC antitrust lawsuit against the company. In the minutes after the ruling, Qualcomm's stock rose, closing 2.3% higher at $108.83. The FTC is reviewing its options.