RF Micro Devices Ships One Millionth EDGE Transceiver Chipset

Greensboro, NC -- RF Micro Devices, Inc. (RFMD) today announced it is the first company to ship one million EDGE cellular transceiver chipsets. RFMD's Polaris 2 Total Radio EDGE transceivers provide handset manufacturers the benefits of enhanced functionality, reduced component count, lower bill of material (BOM) costs, and lower current consumption than competing solutions, through the use of an innovative direct digital polar modulation architecture.

RFMD's Polaris solutions currently enable multiple feature-rich, data-intensive wireless handheld devices. Polaris more than doubles RFMD's cellular content opportunity per handset and represents a major incremental revenue opportunity for the company.

Bob Bruggeworth, president and CEO of RF Micro Devices, said, "We are extremely pleased to announce the shipment of our one millionth Polaris 2 solution. In the few months since volume production began in the September quarter, we have shipped more than one million of our Polaris 2 EDGE transceivers. This is an exceptionally fast ramp of a significant new product for RFMD.

"We continue to expect total Polaris 2 shipments in the December quarter will exceed 1.5 million units, and we currently forecast March quarterly shipments of Polaris 2 will exceed our current December forecast. This achievement speaks directly to the unique customer benefits of our industry-leading EDGE transceiver solution," Bruggeworth added.

RFMD's Polaris 2 Total Radio transceiver chipset is comprised of RFMD's Polaris transceiver and RFMD's PowerStar power amplifier (PA) module, which comprise a complete RF subsystem for cellular handsets and other wireless handheld devices. The Polaris transceiver and PA are optimized to work together, thereby lowering the BOM cost and providing longer battery life. Additionally, through the use of a silicon germanium (SiGe) receiver, the Polaris solution offers excellent receiver sensitivity, which is important to network operators and handset manufacturers because it reduces the frequency of dropped calls.

Source: RF Micro Devices