Akoustis has received its first purchase order from a tier-1 wireless telecom company to develop co-existence a BAW RF filter for 5G mobile handsets and wireless devices. The 5G Mobile market represents a large future opportunity for Akoustis in both unit sales and revenue. According to a February 2019 published report from Gartner, more than 1.5 billion mobile smartphones were sold in 2018 and this number is expected to grow further owing to the introduction of 5G.
Under the terms of the order, Akoustis will use its patented and proprietary XBAW technology to develop a high-band BAW filter for mobile handsets to address the co-existence challenges associated with emerging 5G frequency bands. Akoustis was chosen by this new tier-1 customer given its unique ability to provide BAW filter solutions up to 7 GHz that can offer the high performance necessary to deal with the co-existence of closely-spaced frequency bands. Akoustis expects to deliver first filter samples to the customer by the end of the current quarter.
According to Jeff Shealy, the Founder and CEO of Akoustis, the 5G handset market represents the most meaningful revenue opportunity for Akoustis. This key milestone is a testament to the enormous progress they have made in commercializing their patented high frequency XBAW RF filter technology over the past year. As the sub-6 GHz 5G new radio (NR) mid-band resides between 3.3 GHz to 5 GHz, future filter solutions to resolve co-existence issues in 5G mobile handsets are right in the company’s sweet spot. According to Jeff, they have already developed commercial filter products at 3.8 GHz, 5.2 GHz and 5.6 GHz, proving that they can produce BAW RF filters at the higher frequencies associated with 5G. As a result, the company is currently in discussions with multiple large mobile handset companies seeking high frequency co-existence filter technology.
In July 2018, Akoustis announced that it completed the qualification of its first generation XBAW wafer technology and the underlying high purity piezoelectric materials process at its Canandaigua, NY fabrication facility. The company has recently developed 5.2 GHz (AKF-1252) and 5.6 GHz (AKF-1256) WiFi co-existence filters, a 3.8 GHz filter (AKF-1938) for defense phased-array radar applications, a 3.6 GHz filter for the CBRS infrastructure market, and Band 25 downlink and uplink filters for LTE infrastructure. It is also developing several new filters for the sub-6 GHz bands targeting 5G mobile device, network infrastructure, Wi-Fi CPE and defense markets.
