halve again to 3 dollars SO the RF BOM would be 10% of a 30-dollar handset (for the ultralow-cost handset market) or approximately 7% of a 40-dollar handset. This would only have been achievable if it had been proved feasible to integrate the PA and/or front-end matching in to the RFIC. TI attempted to achieve this, failed, had to write off $250 million of R and D investment and as a result exited the sector that a few years before they had dominated. Several things happened that in retrospect might seem obvious but were not very evident at the time. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 raised the realised average price of smart phones, but actually this also meant that the average realised price of phones in general increased rather than decreased on a year-to-year basis. Inclusion of the iPhone in an operators range plan became and remains a trophy asset and its absence can result in a loss of market value for the operator. Any time-to-market delay therefore assumes a disproportionate importance. This means that the RF design team must choose design and integration options that represent the least risk in terms of time to market delay and the safest way to achieve this is to have relatively unaggressive levels of integration with each separate duplex band having its own discrete RX and TX component and processing path. This has been great news for the RF component community. A five-band iPhone has (at time of writing at least) five RF power amplifiers and all that implies in terms of component and real estate added value and unit prices are relatively robust due to the high overall value of the handset BOM. Also, the ultralow-cost handset market never materialised to the extent anticipated. As stated earlier this is partly due to the aspirational effect that smart phones have had on the lower end of the market. Price point expectations in newly dominant markets particularly China are presently aggressive and are linked to a stated need to move rapidly to a 11-band phone. The performance cost of implementing t