WIN interview
It’s a game that WIN excels at, and by 2006 it was starting to win significant business thanks to the rising demand for GaAs ICs. Many companies started to qualify their products with this Taiwanese foundry, including three big US firms, Skyworks, Avago and Anadigics, and WIN’s revenue from then on has grown at a compound annual growth rate of almost 50 percent to hit $210 million in 2010 – this year it will be even better. In comparison, the average revenue growth in this industry over the last six years is just 13 percent, according to Strategy Analytics.
WIN has also started to turn a profit: In August 2006 the company’s income outstripped its expenditure for the first time, and since 2007 there has been a double-digit percentage increase in profit every year.
The success of WIN stands in stark contrast to the failings of other Taiwanese ventures that had plans to build GaAs fabs at the turn of the millennium. In many cases these fabs never got off the ground, and although Suntek bucked this trend, it subsequently failed due to the collapse of one of its parent companies, Procomp. Why has WIN managed to plough a different path and succeed on its own?
Deep-pocketed investors have certainly helped and the company has good people in key positions that are helping to drive up yields, trim cycle times and ultimately enable the company to price its products very competitively. But arguably the real key to WIN’s success is the pure-play nature of its foundry – it does not make its own products or perform its our own circuit design. “Therefore we do not compete with our customers in the same market,” explains Wang.
GaAs ICs for Wi-fi account for one-fifth of WIN’s revenue and a similar proportion comes from a collection of niche markets, such as high-frequency point-point radios, satellite communications, and fibre optic components. But the lion’s share – the remaining 60 percent of sales – is associated with handsets. Cell phones can feature a pHEMT circuit for switching and house several power amplifiers, all built from HBTs, to deliver signal gain at various frequencies. In this sector more than two-thirds of the company’s revenue comes from the manufacture of HBTs, which can be produced with yields in excess of 98 percent.
WIN will soon release a fourth generation of its HBT technology, and it is already developing a successor to that, which will support production of a new generation of power amplifiers delivering multi-mode, multi-band technology. “You have to support GSM and UMTS at the same time,” says Wang. To succeed, amplifiers must combine a very small footprint with excellence in three
Deep-pocketed investors have certainly helped,and the company has good people in key positions that are helping to
drive up yields, trim cycle times and ultimately enable the company to price its products very competitively. But arguably the real
key to WIN’s success is the pure-play nature of its foundry – it does not make
its own products or perform its our own circuit design. In other words, it does not compete with its customers in the same market
areas: They must be rugged enough under an extreme load mismatch condition to meet the demand of GSM; they must have a high enough linearity for UMTS, which is a requirement for WCDMA; and their power efficiency must be very high. WIN is tackling all these challenges, and Wang says that it is making good progress.
Switching HBTs
During the last few years, many leading GaAs manufactures have developed circuits incorporating more complex devices, known as either BiFETs or BiHEMTs, which unite an amplifier with a switch. WIN has not been left behind - it has its own variant of this technology that is known as the H2
W process. This has
been used by several customers to make products for wireless markets.
Optical
inspection of 6-inch GaAs wafers in fab B
November/December 2011
www.compoundsemiconductor.net 17
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