Skyworks CEO sees chance to save power in AI-driven phones with Qorvo deal

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By Stephen Nellis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Skyworks Solutions CEO Phil Brace sees a path toward chips that would help smartphones have faster wireless data connections while consuming less power by combining his firm’s technologies with those from smaller Qorvo, he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Skyworks on Tuesday announced a cash and stock offer to buy the smaller Qorvo that values Qorvo at $9.76 billion. The two companies are both major suppliers to Apple and other smartphone firms, where their chips help to handle the radio signals that carry wireless data.

While the two firms do have some areas of competition, Brace said the challenge both face is the fast-growing amount of data that has to be processed on phones and shuffled back and forth between phones and data centers to power AI applications such as chatbots. Brace said that some Qorvo technologies, such as antenna tuners, could be combined with Skyworks products such as filters to create combined chips that would consume less power – which in turn frees up a smartphone’s limited battery to handle more AI work.

“All of that processing in those (AI) data centers ultimately has to get out to people, and the way it’s going to get up to the people at the end is wirelessly,” Brace told Reuters in an interview. “Once we start putting some more AI and inference and things at the edge (on phones) that’s going to require increasing demands on the (radio frequency chips) to be able to transmit and receive more data and do so in a lower power way.” 

Skyworks expects the deal to close in early 2027, and it will need approval from regulators in China. Brace said he believes the company can win approval for the deal because the combined company’s products could help Chinese handset makers compete in the premium segment of the smartphone market.

“Some of those phone manufacturers still have and want premium phones to compete with some of our other customers, and having that high level of technology and high-level integration is also something I think they’re going to want,” Brace said.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates)