Akoustis Ships First 5G Mobile WLP Filters to Tier-1 RF Component Company
- Company Delivers First of Two Filters for its 5G Mobile Customer
- New Filters to Offer 5G/WiFi Coexistence – Targeting Multiple OEMs and ODMs
- Company’s Second 5G Filter Design Expected to Ship in Calendar Q4 2021
Charlotte, N.C., Aug. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKTS) (“Akoustis” or the “Company”), an integrated device manufacturer (IDM) of patented bulk acoustic wave (BAW) high-band RF filters for mobile and other wireless applications, announced today that it has shipped the first 5G mobile filters to its tier-1 RF component customer. The filters are packaged using wafer-level technology (WLP) and are the first of two 5G filter designs that Akoustis is fabricating for this foundry customer.
The Company plans to further expand its capabilities in WLP as it delivers new filters that can leverage the technology for mobile handsets and other devices where size considerations are at a premium.
Both filters are being developed to offer 5G/WiFi coexistence in the mid and ultra-high bands and will be considered for use in filter modules for 5G smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Akoustis is on-track to deliver the second WLP filter sample to this customer by the end of the current calendar year and remains confident that it will be ready to enter production with this customer in the second half of calendar 2022.
Jeff Shealy, founder and CEO of Akoustis, stated, “5G mobile represents our largest potential filter market by both revenue and unit volume. Shipping our new 5G mobile filters with our most advanced wafer-level-package technology is a very significant achievement for our team.” Mr. Shealy continued, “While we remain focused on the ongoing commercialization and customer adoption of our WiFi CPE and 5G network infrastructure XBAW™ products, we are aligning the production readiness of these new, high performance 5G mobile device filters for our strategic customers’ RF module release by Q4 calendar 2022.”
Akoustis is actively delivering volume production of its WiFi 6 tandem filter solutions, shipping multiple 5G small cell XBAWTM filter solutions, delivering initial designs of its new 5G mobile filter solutions to multiple customers and is now entering the market with its new WiFi 6E coexistence XBAWTM filter solutions.
Given the rapidly growing sales funnel activity as well as ongoing interaction with customers regarding expected ramps in both 5G mobile, WiFi 6 and WiFi 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. Current product catalog filters include a 5.6 GHz WiFi filter, a 5.2 GHz WiFi filter, a 5.5 GHz WiFi-6E filter, a 6.5 GHz WiFi 6E filter, three small cell 5G network infrastructure filters including two Band n77 filters and one Band n79 filter, a 3.8 GHz filter and five S-Band filters for defense phased-array radar applications, a 3.6 GHz filter for the CBRS 5G infrastructure market and a C-Band filter for the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) market. The Company is also developing several new filters for the sub-7 GHz bands targeting 5G mobile device, network infrastructure, WiFi CPE and defense markets.
About Akoustis Technologies, Inc.
Akoustis® (http://www.akoustis.com/) is a high-tech BAW RF filter solutions company that is pioneering next-generation materials science and MEMS wafer manufacturing to address the market requirements for improved RF filters - targeting higher bandwidth, higher operating frequencies and higher output power compared to incumbent polycrystalline BAW technology deployed today. The Company utilizes its proprietary XBAWTM manufacturing process to produce bulk acoustic wave RF filters for mobile and other wireless markets, which facilitate signal acquisition and accelerate band performance between the antenna and digital back end. Superior performance is driven by the significant advances of high-purity, single-crystal and associated piezoelectric materials and the resonator-filter process technology which drives electro-mechanical coupling and translates to wide filter bandwidth.
Akoustis plans to service the fast growing multi-billion-dollar RF filter market using its integrated device manufacturer (IDM) business model. The Company owns and operates a 120,000 sq. ft. ISO-9001:2015 registered commercial wafer-manufacturing facility located in Canandaigua, NY, which includes a class 100 / class 1000 cleanroom facility - tooled for 150-mm diameter wafers - for the design, development, fabrication and packaging of RF filters, MEMS and other semiconductor devices. Akoustis Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in the Piedmont technology corridor near Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Contact: COMPANY: Tom Sepenzis Akoustis Technologies VP of Corporate Development & IR (980) 689-4961 tsepenzis@akoustis.com The Del Mar Consulting Group, Inc. Robert B. Prag, President (858) 794-9500 bprag@delmarconsulting.com
Released August 30, 2021