SLAB: Silicon Labs Wants to Put Radios Everywhere
As a small-cap semiconductor company, Silicon Labs must rely on innovation to drive growth and stand out from the crowd. To do so, Silicon Labs relies on its particular strength of putting analog components onto standard CMOS (rather than exotic material) chips. Another example of this was announced today.
Silicon Laboratories Inc. SLAB, a leader in high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs, today announced the extension of its broadcast audio product portfolio to include the Si473x AM/FM receiver family. The Si473x enables an AM/FM receiver to be easily added to consumer devices such as clock and portable radios, home stereos, MP3 players, docking stations and mobile handsets.The Si473x is the first fully integrated AM/FM radio receiver from antenna input to audio output in a single monolithic IC. Conventional AM/FM radio implementations are large, expensive and difficult to manufacture, limiting the inclusion of AM radio functionality in many small, portable, high-volume applications. The single-chip Si473x requires only two external components in 0.15 cm(2) of board space compared to more than 50 components and 10 cm(2) of board space for conventional solutions.
Samples of the Si4730 and Si4731 are available in a compact 3×3 mm 20-pin quad flat no-lead (QFN) package. Pricing for the Si4730 begins at $4.87 in quantities of 10K. Pricing for the Si4731, which supports RDS/RBDS, begins at $5.53 in quantities of 10K. An evaluation board is available for $150.
At that price range, each million radios sold contributes one percentage point of growth for Silicon Labs.
Disclosure: William Trent has a long position in SMH.
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[…] We highlighted the FM tuner line, as well as the transition in mobile handsets, in earlier posts. What concerns us now, however, is the very high expense related to stock option compensation, and concern over whether investors will still be inclined to ignore them now that they have been included on the income statement for a full year and year/year comparisons can be made based on GAAP earnings. (Side note: given that GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, why is it that non-GAAP - presumably not accepted - numbers are those most commonly quoted?) The company says: GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $5.2 million, or $0.09 per fully diluted share. Non-GAAP net income, excluding certain charges, was $13.5 million, or $0.24 per fully diluted share. […]
[…] By comparison, their 8-bit MCU starts at $0.45, while an AM/FM receiver goes for $4.87. So, while the volume for the clock multiplier may be much lower than those of other product lines, it will take far fewer of them to make an impact on the company’s revenue growth. For more information, see all articles on: Stock Market, Semis, SLAB, SMH […]