Sivers IMA has changed its name to Sivers Semiconductors. The company develops RFICs and antennas for advanced mmWave systems for data and telecommunications networks. It took hard work from a lot of people within the company to find the right branding for the “soul” of the company. Sivers Semiconductors has identified a strong underlying market trend to build innovation on; the exponential growth based on mobile data traffic growth.
To make a product with the right specification, Sivers believes that it needs to build a partner network within the eco-system around your products. In the best case, it will be able to integrate products with these partners’ products to further strengthen the partnership and increase the barriers to entry.
A successful example is the way Sivers has worked for many years with the Renesas. By working close to the eco-system, Sivers has learned a lot from its partners and will be able to create more innovation within the partner network. By using the partner network, it will also be able to see much further into the future.
Standards and regulations set the scene
Another way of looking far into the future is to look at standardizations and regulations within the data and telecom market. For example, the major success in the data and telecom business is thanks to standardization that has been done by IEEE (for WiFi) and GSMA (for 4G/5G, etc).
These organizations work on specifications for a very long time before they hit the market. US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is one of the main bodies that are always early to allow usage of new technology.
For example, they were first out with 57-64 GHz and when they in 2016 allowed the extended band of 66-71 GHz, Sivers was first into the market, simply because it followed FCC and viewed their pre-consultation and hence could launch a product very quickly.
Another “regulatory” body is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) who is organizing the World Radio Conference (WRC), which for example sets global frequencies. In Europe, we have the Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), which created the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). ETSI has also approved the use of the 57-71 GHz band for unlicensed 5G services, which now paves the way for this technology to be rolled also in Europe from January 1, 2020.
