From: EETimes

NEW YORK – Anadigics is on a roll. So is its CEO, Mario Rivas.

Anadigics, a supplier of radio frequency ICs, has been riding the momentum in the 3G and 4G wireless market. “We are growing at a rate of 50 percent year-on-year,” Rivas said during a recent interview with EE Times. “That’s not too bad when our competitors like Skyworks and TriQuint are growing at a rate of 30 percent and RF Micro Devices at 10 percent.”

In the last three months, Anadigics has continued its roll with big design wins for its power amplifier products. Known as “High-Efficiency-at-Low-Power” (HELP) portfolio, the company’s power amplifiers are now used in LG Electronics’ 4G USB wireless modems (for Verizon Wireless); and Samsung’s 3G Galaxy Tab (one model for Sprint and Verizon Wireless in the US; another model for the Korean market).

OEMs are picking Anadigics’ power amplifiers to boost performance and reliability in their own wireless devices, he said.

During its last quarter, Anadigics, also saw record shipments to RIM for the Bold 9650 and installs in 3G Pearl phones, according to the company. Besides Samsung’s Galaxy S Epic 4G and Galaxy Tabs, Anadigics secured multiple Android design wins at ZTE, Huawei and LG.

Design wins like these are especially sweet for Anadigics. It was only two years ago when the company got into big trouble by failing to deliver its chips in time in volume to customers. That product shortage happened before Rivas joined Anadigics in February 2009. Looking back, Rivas said, “We were the victim of our own success.” But he added, “Once something like that happens, it’s not easy to ask customers to come back and put their business back into our hands.”

Rivas may have walked into Anadigics at the right time.

As a veteran executive in the chip industry, Rivas, 56, has seen plenty of semiconductor cycles and has lived through tough times both professionally and personally.

Rivas also knows a thing or two about the hard knocks on life. Born and educated in El Salvador, Rivas started his engineering career at Texas Instruments in the United States – almost accidentally. As Rivas tells it, he had fully intended to return to his home country with his Master’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY). But the Salvadoran civil war broke out in the late 1970s, and his mother strongly advised him not to return.

After working briefly at TI, Rivas joined Motorola. He was there 19 years, moving quickly up the ladder within the organization.

Unlike those who grew up in Silicon Valley, Rivas’ career has been very diverse. It includes his stint in Motorola’s Tokyo office; a period as executive vice president of communications business at Philips Semiconductors (now NXP Semiconductors, Eindhoven, Netherlands). He next served as executive vice president of AMD’s Computing Products Group in Texas. Rivas joined AMD in late 2006, but was there for less than two years. He left the company after AMD’s first quad-core Opteron server chip fiasco hit the company hard in late 2007. (AMD found glitches in the server chip after its rollout, resulting in a serious disruption of its distribution.)

At every turn of events, though, Rivas has remained open, straightforward, amiable and optimistic.


Anadigics is not inside Verizon's iPhone
Armed with his global experience and his people’s skills, Rivas has always excelled in building relationships with his customers -- especially in Asia. Rivas’ experience running the communications business at the Dutch giant, along with his expert knowledge in the wireless IC field, has undoubtedly helped Anadigics to regain trust and restore relationships with Anadigics’ important Korean customers such as Samsung and LG.

Following are excerpts of Rivas’ recent interview with EE Times. Rivas covered a range of topics including Anadigics’ business outlook, Apple’s iPhone for Verizon, media tablets, the upcoming Mobile World Congress and others.

EE Times: What’s the critical element in Anadigics’ success in the mobile market?

Rivas: You know full well that the wireless business today is a game of platforms. Our partnership with Qualcomm has opened the door to a lot of opportunities – not just in Samsung and LG, but also with ZTE and Huawei in China. We provide Qualcomm-qualified power amplifiers to those on the Qualcomm’s platform.

EE Times: What are the challenges working with Asian partners?

Rivas: Having lived in Japan for some time, this is not foreign to me…but our Asian customers always want to know when I am visiting Asia, and they demand that I come to see them first.

EE Times: They want to make sure that you pay equal attention to them?

Rivas: No. It’s more like: “Don’t pay any attention to the other guy.”

So, in China, we have an office in Shenzhen, and another in Shanghai. We support each customer through separate offices. I often end up staying in a hotel in Hong Kong, making separate trips to our different customers.

EE Times: How did you get on the Qualcomm’s platform? Are you the only supplier of power amplifiers on their platform?

Rivas: We are the key supplier. Of course, if we fail to deliver, Qualcomm’s licensees will tell Qualcomm that Qualcomm needs to qualify others.

EE Times: That makes me wonder if Anadigics’ power amplifiers are actually in Apple’s new CDMA iPhones. Are you in it?

Rivas: No, we are not. Apple has made very good progress from the original iPhone, to iPhone 2, 3, 3GS and 4. But as it migrated from Infineon [baseband] chipset to that of Qualcomm [CDMA], all the while transitioning to Apple’s own A4, Apple probably didn’t have much time for making radical changes [in power amplifiers]. They went with what they are familiar with. [Editor’s note: Apple’s iPhone has been using TriQuint’s power amplifiers.]

EE Times: I know Anadigics got a design-win in Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. How big an impact do you expect media tablets to have on Anadigics’ business in the future?

Rivas: I see two sets of brackets around tablets. There is a smartphone category in one bracket; and portable notebooks in another bracket. Media tablets will be in between those two. From the technology standpoint, whether we supply power amplifiers to smartphones or tablets, it makes no difference to me. For sure, tablets will increase the total available market for our chips. But the business impact of tablets on us isn’t anywhere close to what the AMD Board felt about the tablets’ impact on AMD’s business.


Future of LTE/4G and femtocells
EE Times: Where do you think network operators are going -- with their LTE/4G development?



Rivas: I believe something like 4G USB data sticks could let operators do a stress test of their network infrastructure. With the increase of smartphones, there is no doubt that the traffic in networks is multiplying.

EE Times: I know Anadigics also has products for femtocells. How soon do you think femtocell market will take off?

Rivas: I believe femtocells in Manhattan, for example, will have great potentials in taking a lot of pain out of the network. Cellular networks -- both by Verizon and AT&T -- are getting stressed. But the success of femtocells depends on the business model, which is still evolving.

Operators can either charge you extra for fixing up your coverage problems by installing femtocells, or they can tell you that they will give you a free femtocell router, because you’ve been a royal customer to them.

EE Times: Besides Qualcomm, are you on any other chip vendors’ wireless platforms?

Rivas: We are on Infineon platform, Broadcom platform and ST-Ericsson platform.

EE Times: Any platform you wish you had been on?

Rivas: MediaTek, I wish we were on their platform. To be fair, MediaTek had been in 2G play for a long time. Only recently, MediaTek got into the 3G market… It’s time for us to intercept them.

I believe that the future of this industry is in China – through companies like Huawei, ZTE, MediaTek and HTC in Taiwan. Don't bet against China, Inc.

EE Times: You are going to Barcelona next month [February] to attend the Mobile World Congress. What do you expect to see there this year?

Rivas: I expect to see real LTE devices this year. At the Mobile World Congress last year, it was all about LTE, but “Trust me, this thing works.”
As we roll out more multimode and multiband products, I look forward to seeing many more LTE devices.