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 locked the process flow for its second chip scale package (CSP). The new CSP technology supports the Company’s XBAW® filter products across the 5G mobile, WiFi mobile and CPE and network infrastructure markets.
The new CSP is entering technology qualification in the June quarter with production release expected in the second half of calendar 2021. The first use of this new CSP is for a custom enterprise-class WiFi 6E filter solution for a tier 1 customer. Akoustis is enabling both in-house and outsourced manufacturing of this new CSP to provide rapid prototype cycle-time, supply chain redundancy and flexible capacity.
Jeff Shealy, CEO of Akoustis, commented, “We continue to deliver enhanced, micro packaging capabilities for our market leading XBAW® technology to increase the number of markets we can serve with our leading RF filter solutions.” Mr. Shealy continued, “These new packaging solutions allow us to target 5G mobile form factors and deliver best-in-class packaging solutions for WiFi consumer premise equipment (CPE) and mobile network infrastructure products.”
Akoustis is actively delivering volume production of its WiFi 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 WiFi 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 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.