Akoustis Technologies, Inc. announced that it has signed a foundry agreement with a mobile RF front-end customer for the manufacture of XBAW® filters for 5G mobile handsets and other wireless devices.
Akoustis will manufacture the new high frequency RF filter using its patented and proprietary XBAW® process at its fab in Canandaigua, NY. The foundry agreement was reached after the customer evaluated initial filter samples that Akoustis delivered in the March 2021 quarter. Akoustis plans to ship additional samples in the second half of calendar 2021 that utilize its new wafer chip-scale packaging. The customer is expected to ramp volume production by the second half of calendar 2022.
Jeff Shealy, founder and CEO of Akoustis, stated, “Entering the 5G Mobile Smartphone filter market is a significant milestone for our team. Achieving first pass success with the XBAW® filter that we previously delivered to our second mobile RF front-end customer has now resulted in our first foundry agreement for smartphones and other wireless devices.” Mr. Shealy continued, “The mobile handset BAW filter market is our largest potential intermediate-to-long term market opportunity by both unit volume and revenue and this agreement positions Akoustis to generate significant incremental unit and revenue growth in the second half of calendar 2022 and beyond.”
Akoustis is actively delivering volume production of its Wi-Fi 6 tandem filter solutions, shipping multiple 5G small cell XBAW® filter solutions, delivering initial designs of its new 5G mobile filter solutions to multiple customers and is now entering the market with its new Wi-Fi 6E coexistence XBAW® filter solutions.
Given the rapidly growing sales funnel activity as well as ongoing interaction with customers regarding expected ramps in both 5G mobile and Wi-Fi 6E in calendar 2022, the company plans to increase the annual production capacity at its New York fab by the end of calendar 2021 to approximately 500 million filters per year.
Akoustis currently has 15 commercial XBAW filters in its product catalog, and recently introduced 5.6 GHz and 6.6 GHz WiFi 6E coexistence filter modules, which when qualified, will bring the number of catalog products to 17. The company is also developing several new filters for the sub-7 GHz bands targeting 5G mobile device, network infrastructure, Wi-Fi CPE and defense markets.