Anadigics, CEO Mario Rivas, both on a roll

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.

[Editor’s note: AMD’s Board of Directors reportedly were unhappy with Dirk Meyer’s reluctance to move the company into the booming smartphone and tablet markets, which ended up costing him his CEO job.]