The style of these doggedly analog competitors is very similar: They use engineering-oriented customer journals and application notes to promote their best products. Tuning and tweaking existing products generates brand-new products with a relatively small number of engineering man-hours. Although neither supplier has skyrocketed with emerging markets, both companies have shown steady growth and profitability.

But, at the risk of getting run over in Los Gatos by a red Ferrari, it's starting to look like Maxim has an edge. In the latest figures released by Dataquest, Maxim, with $674 million in 1999 analog revenues, was ranked 12th in the worldwide analog market. LTC, at $506 million, was No. 16. While Linear Technology leads Maxim in voltage regulators and amplifiers, Maxim appears to be way ahead in data converters, and somewhat ahead in interface components, according to Dataquest.

What allowed one company to creep ahead in this horse race? The difference, in my opinion, was that Maxim was a little quicker to see the importance of a market focus on RF and wireless. Maxim took over the BiCMOS fab from Tektronix with perhaps this market in mind, and has come up with a steady stream of frequency synthesizers, mixers, oscillators and direct-conversion ICs, as well as traditional downconverter parts. Just this week, Maxim was due to release a 100-mW Bluetooth power amplifier and a low-noise amplifier for cell phones, both in chip-scale packaging.

But LTC won't take this sitting down. The company has introduced a 3-A low-dropout regulator for cell phones, and I'll bet there are other things for this market coming down the pike.