'Twas all revealed in a September SA press release titled: RFMD, Skyworks and TriQuint Steer Gallium Arsenide Industry Growth. All three top winners are based in the USA. Other North American companies in the top rankings included Avago and M/A-COM, giving North America seven of the top ten slots, and SA doesn't expect that to change for the next few years. That stands to reason, given the strong original ties of the GaAs industry to the USA's lucrative defense establishment. Other key findings from SA's reports, titled: "GaAs Device Vendor Market Share 2007: North America" and "GaAs Device Vendor Market Share 2007: Asia Pacific and Europe" include the fact that Japanese manufacturers accounted for over 13% of the global GaAs device market in 2007. Given the cellphone dominance in Japan, I'd have thought that number would be higher, but either US defense trumped, or Japanese cellphone manufacturers bought American. Mitsubishi Electric remained the largest Japanese supplier with Eudyna Devices also included in the top ten. The largest European GaAs device manufacturer was UMS as we move forward which was ranked 12th.

Let's focus on TriQuint, given their top of the top ranking in the GaAs foundry division. There are lots of canned reasons why TriQuint is in the top slot, all of which are well stated and reiterated in press releases, news stories and around investor circles. Behind the scenes, however, and looking back over the years at TQ's year after year performance, what makes that compound semi company a consistent winner in my book is the fact that they've stayed the course through thick and thin. They started life as a GaAs foundry, spread themselves sensibly over the various major markets as those markets proved viable, and they had the good sense to cling to their defense business even when warring wasn't in vogue.

Over the decades times have been good, but more often than not, times have been very, very tough. TriQuint has weathered it all by staying on that well defined course. They've been sensible, conservative, and considerate. They've earned the reputation within the industry as a superb corporate citizen. The big plus that is that TriQuint's leaders are some of the nicest people in the business. In the long run (in addition to getting the specs right and pumping out the goods on time, at a reasonable profit, for the stated price) those are the virtues that count, especially with customers. TriQuint has also been one of the first to embrace GaN for electronic applications which, in my book, shows a bit of extra courage and foresight.