All right. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our conference. The first slot today will be GCT Semiconductor. I have the honor to introduce John Schlaefer to you. He is the CEO of the company, and the company itself are very much on a short commute. They're a true Silicon Valley company. In the name, we already see it, Semiconductor. GCT is at the forefront of 5G chipsets for really anything besides anything that is in a phone, and we love John and the team, especially because of what's ahead, right?
The company has, in deference to many, you know, startups, really rich history, and they really know how to operate, how to make sales happen, but they also have a growth story ahead of them, and that's what we are excited for, and I hope you guys are excited for John and the presentation. John?
Thank you, Ralph. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for being with us. Let me see if I can run this. There we go. Okay. So, my name is John Schlaefer. I'm the CEO of GCT Semiconductor. I've been with GCT for a long time, since 2006 timeframe, and since 2013 as the CEO. Who are we? So we are a fabless semiconductor company, and we focus on the 4G and the 5G chipsets. We've been focusing on 4G since the beginning of that activity in the 2010 timeframe. If you're familiar with this space, it started off with WiMAX, and then it transitioned into 4G LTE.
So we've been doing 4G LTE chipsets since that timeframe, and it's the baseband and the RF chips, chips as a chipset with the protocol stack and the application software. We also do reference designs for our customers to help them get into a situation where they can ramp as quickly as possible. Our customers are the suppliers for the network operators, so these would be the first-tier network operators like Verizon in the U.S. and KDDI in Japan and others, as well as the private network operators, which there are many more of now. Our typical sales are not to Verizon, as Verizon would be a customer of our customer, so we sell into their suppliers. We have a large patent portfolio on CMOS focused on antenna transceivers and modem technology. Why now?
Now, because of the transition from 4G to 5G, where you've got several things happening. You've got a lot more use cases happening. You've got increased volumes as the performance in 5G is sufficient at this point to replace landline options. And not only that, but from a chipset perspective, you've got ASPs that are increasing around 4X, and that's because of the complexity in the chipset. So if you just look at the market opportunity here, as Ralph said, we are not focused on smartphones. We are focused on all the other type of applications in this space, and the typical applications are shown here.
So, we've been doing FWA now for a long time in the 4G space, and FWA is increasing now with 5G because of the performance improvements, specifically against fiber. And if you look at companies like Verizon, you can see that their subscriber gains are all in this area. Mobile broadband, the most typical thing would be a hotspot, and then you've got a lot of other applications, especially in the 5G area, where you've got a lot more use cases, such as, you know, first responder applications, security, tracking applications, automotive applications, et cetera. So again, we're not in the smartphone space, but we are in all the other applications that are wireless. So what is happening now?
So there's a lot of tailwinds now that are a positive for 5G, where you've got, you know, heavy streaming. We're all streaming. This has increased significantly with 4G and now into 5G. If you remember the beginning, as you go from 3G to 4G, we really couldn't stream on our smartphones. You had to cache, and you had, you know, streaming activity that was always start, stop. And then 4G allowed you to do that, and 5G, it's now everywhere, and then we just went through COVID. COVID introduced us to remote education, remote work, remote everything, so the demand is huge. You've got augmented reality, virtual reality, industrial automations, artificial intelligence, the smart home, et cetera. So all these things are driving traffic on the internet.
In the West, you have a few options to Qualcomm in this space, which is, you know, the 80% dominant share. And also, you've got, as I mentioned, the traffic and the subscribers from smartphones is relatively flat, and the operators are gaining their increases in growth right now out of subscriber growth in broadband data. And then you've got the infrastructure activities within the U.S. and elsewhere. Also, you know, improving the infrastructure leading to 5G, and then you've got a decoupling with China. And in this case, what that does is it removes suppliers from the landscape, like Huawei or ZTE. Now, I showed you the four kind of categories in this space.
This is one of our favorites, which is FWA, and just some of the numbers here. If you look at 2023, you've got about 133 million connections worldwide, and the bottom right chart is worldwide. Then, as you go up to 2028, you see, you know, 300 million connections, and this is all as a result of the growth in 5G. So you see 4G rolling off, and 5G is where the growth is happening. Then, if you look just in the U.S., with the major carriers, the ones that are investing mostly are actually Verizon and T-Mobile. AT&T has invested in fiber, but they're coming along now as well with some investments for FWA.
But, specifically Verizon, if you look back at their last eight quarters, you can see that their subscriber growth is between 250,000 and 300,000 subscribers a quarter, and that's all broadband data, and 90% of that is FWA. So this is again, the bottom left is U.S., but this is being reflected in other markets as well. So for GCT, this picture here just shows the landscape as you go from, you know, 4G to 5G. This is a progression in technology and in time, with 4G LTE starting around the 2010 timeframe.
But the landscape here and the competitive landscape really looks like a graveyard of who's gotten in and who's gotten out, and you see some big names here. You see Broadcom and NVIDIA, and then Intel also. And in all these cases, these folks were getting into the smartphone space, and in order to have the scale that they needed to really make an impact and to be meaningful for them. And so in doing that and competing with Qualcomm, they got out, and actually many others got out. So where we are now with 5G is you have last man standing so to speak, and we are one of them.
Again, in order to compete in the 5G area, you really have had to invest and actually build up your expertise and ecosystem through the 4G period and with the 4G customers, 'cause those are the same customers that are actually transitioning into 5G now. If you look at, you know, the 5G arena, what you have here is you've got actually Qualcomm, which is the dominant player. You've got Samsung, which really focuses on their internal needs, so this is, you know, their internal demand for, like, the Galaxy phone. MediaTek also mainly focused on smartphone. There's been some activity with Sequans recently where. But their real focus is in the IoT space.
So the IoT space is the very low end, ten megabits per second type of data rates. We're talking in the 5G world, where for FWA, we're talking, you know, six gigabits per second, eight gigabits per second, that sort of thing. So they've always played on the low end in the IoT space and will continue to do that. That's not really our focus, so our focus is on the high end, and it has been in the 4G area as well. So again, a very few suppliers, and this is the, you know, the scarcity value that we have now and going into the future.
This is a snapshot of our engagements that we've had in the 4G area over the last six to eight years, and if you're not familiar with this, you know, 4G is not homogeneous. 5G is not homogeneous. So as you start here with 4G, you've got Category 3, Category 4, Category 6, Category 12. You know, a very simple way of explaining it, the data throughput goes up significantly as you go through those levels. So Category 3 would be like 50 megabits per second. Category 12 is in the range of maybe 800 megabits per second. And then, again, as you go into 5G, you're talking 10x that, so you're talking 6 to 8 gigabits per second.
You know, as I mentioned, the operators are not our customers, but their suppliers are. So we sell into the suppliers that then sell into Verizon and the other operators. So these are the types of devices with the type of product that we have had available, Category 3, Category 4, Category 12, and the type of devices that we've been in for these operators. So things like a mobile router, smart meter, mobile router. When you see CPE, that's kind of, you know, that customer premises equipment, but it really is a home modem, or it's an indoor modem or an outdoor modem. You know, other types of like module applications.
So the module applications would be enabling technology for other sorts of larger products. Sometimes it's actually tracking devices. Sometimes there's an application where DISH had an application where they wanted better connectivity for upload and download speed from their boxes. They enabled that with a module, so those sorts of applications. You do see here early in the early days, we were in smartphones, and that was in the Category 3 timeframe, probably 2010, but we got out of the smartphone space and focused in on all these other types of applications. With our focus on broadband data, it's important to have the MIMO capability.
So, there's a lot of concern about overloading of the network, as you go into 5G with increased traffic, and what's gonna solve this problem is a multiple in, multiple out. So a multiple user, multiple in, multiple out, it requires multiple antennas, and we've optimized this technology in all of our high-end chipsets in 4G and now going into 5G. This is a technology that will help the operators solve this problem. We've been selling now into Verizon for the last 12 years, and Verizon is one of our alpha customers in the 5G space. Verizon very much wants to have alternatives to Qualcomm.
They don't want to be dominated as they have been on the chipset pricing, as well as the ecosystem. So they want, you know, strong ecosystems. So they've been, they've invested in our development in the 5G chipsets, and they will be getting some of the first samples from us, as well as their suppliers will as well. So, part of this activity is actually reference designs for them and for their suppliers. And this is just a snapshot of the types of products that are now being used or the types of semiconductor products that are now being used in the space. You can see here in the 4G IoT, which is the very low end, 10 megabits per second type of speeds, maybe up to, maybe 50 megabits per second.
You've got companies like Sequans and Altair that are participating in this, but it gets very thin as you get up into the, you know, Category 6, Category 12, and then certainly as you get up into 5G, so we believe that this is a good growth area for us, and we will be a significant supply partner for Verizon with our 5G chipset and then just kind of a snapshot of what we've done in the 4G world with, you know, our design process, you know, qualification, certification, and then shipping and volume, which we've been doing now for the last 10 years for OEM, ODM suppliers for these operators, and then the same thing we'll be doing in the 5G space.
We've been working now on the 5G chipset in development now for a while, and we'll be sampling at the end of this year, and then our alpha customers are shown here, which will be getting the first chipsets, as well as reference design to speed up their adoption and launch. This is showing our portfolio, so on the left-hand side here, the chipsets that we've been selling now for a long time, and then are in production. So we have an IoT chip, which is low end, which competes with the Sequans offering, and then this is Category 4, Category 7, Category 12.
We also have a Category 19 chipset, which has a little bit of volume, but really, as you get into Category 19, what people really want is 5G chipsets. So our 5G chipset will be both 5G and 4G, with actually Category 15 and Category 19 for 4G. So the 5G chipset is starting here with a you know a high-end chip and a mid-tier chip. These are price differentiated and also some performance differentiated. We have also invested in one last 4G chipset, which is targeted at the utility space.
4G will have long legs in the utility space, and you know, other applications that are operating like in the 450 megahertz band. And you know, for products that are not you know, consumer electronics, they're products that will stay in the field for you know, seven to 10 years. This has been developed in collaboration with some utility partners. The portfolio for 5G is shown here with the start of sampling in Q4, and then the ramp starting in the Q1 timeframe. The key investment highlights you know, scarcity value. I've just shown you the very few suppliers.
There's a shortage in the semiconductor space in general, and then there's a shortage of suppliers that are focusing on 5G. So that combination is a very, very positive thing for us. We've got a proven ability to support and supply into the major wireless programs, including network operators. I mentioned, you know, the very strong growth in volume as you go from 4G to 5G. There's also a strong growth in ASPs. So there's a large increase in complexity of the chips that, as you go from 800 megabits per second to 8 gigabits per second. So the ASPs are going up by 4X. We've got a number of 5G development agreements.
I don't know if you've paid attention to the last earnings call. We've had some that have been, you know, standing now for a while with Verizon. We announced a few more in the last few months, actually in the last month. And then, our focus for the semiconductor process, we're using the eight-nanometer node from Samsung. So these are the key investment highlights that we think would make a GCT investment attractive. So I think that brings me to the end. I've got a yellow light here, so I know that I'm at the end.
Perfect.
And so we'll do Q&A now.
Exactly. So we have about one or two minutes, one or two questions. So I open up the room. If not, I have one or two prepared, but I would like to give it up to you first.
You have to kind of pardon my ignorance on the industry, but how do you guys sell this? Do you have a sales force? I mean, how do you guys, you know-
Yeah. Yeah, we have a sales team, a marketing team and a sales team, with sales office in Japan and Taiwan and Korea and in China.
Just to follow up, like, are you guys looking to grow that, or, like, as the transition continues, or... I'm just kind of curious.
Oh, I'm sorry. Can you say it again?
Are you guys looking to grow the sales force?
Oh, uh-
-as the transition continues?
Yes. Yes, we will. We'll be adding salespeople as we ramp.
Thank you.
Yeah.
If not, I have a question. John, in the past, maybe without, you know, giving too much away for modeling questions for 2025 and 2026, but I think it might be interesting for people to know sort of what where sales growth looked like in the past for 4G chipsets-
Right.
and maybe if you can give a hint.
You can look at our history and in the last, I don't know, maybe three or four years, we've been in the $20 million range a year. If you look, we've been transitioning out of the 4G chips because the 4G chips are kind of ramping down, so the future is 5G. But if I look back at 2022 timeframe, you know, we were doing, you know, 300,000 chips a quarter. And, you know, if you look at what that would be at a $40 ASP, you know, that would be flat or neutral without thinking about, you know, any kind of market growth.
Okay, I think that helps to understand what the future will look like for GCT.
Yeah.
With that, I'll close it for this session, and then thank you again for John and everybody that attended.