Top Articles on Microwave Journal for 2011

Here are the top 10 most viewed articles this year on the Microwave Journal web site:

1. The Current State of Technology and Future Trends in Wireless Communications and Applications
   


2. Cognitive Radar: The Next Radar Wave?
   


3. RFID: The Next Generation Auto-ID Technology
   


4. A Compact, Omni-directional, Circularly Polarized Microstrip Antenna
   


5. Making Thermal Resistance Measurements without Test Diodes or Thermal Stages
   


6. An Analog Approach to Power Amplifier Predistortion
   


7. Trends in Defence Electronics: Technological Convergence in Radar and EW
   


8. Xinger®-III Doherty Combiner Offers Advantages Over a PCB Combiner
   


9. Two-arm Archimedean Spiral Helical Antenna with Wraparound Absorber
   


10. Modern RFID Readers

Half of these articles are not from this year showing the long life time of technical articles as some of them are several years (or more) old.

Here are the top 10 News items for 2011:

1. AWR Announces China Expansion with Office in Asia


2. TI to Acquire National Semiconductor


3. Rogers Assists Circuit Designer with Free Impedance Calculator Software


4. Agilent Ships Latest ADS Platform


5. Cambridge Consultants Sprints Ahead with Counter-terror Search Technology


6. NXP Launches High Performance RF Design Challenge


7. Skyworks to Acquire SiGe Semiconductor for $210 M


8. GigOptix to Acquire Endwave
   
9. Comtech Receives $3.3 M for High Power Amplifiers and Switches


10. TiaLinx Announces Launch of Cougar20-H, A Mini-Robot

The biggest news of the year for me was the National Instruments acquisition of AWR and Phase Matrix announced right before IMS 2011. Also popular were our show coverage and show wrap up articles which all ranked very high. What was your favorite article or topic of the year?

Summary of Dec Cell Phone Mkt Shares

This market insight report compares Q3 shelfshare trends in smartphone and non-smartphone markets across the world. The analysis was carried out using SpecTRAX, from Strategy Analytics which covers 13,000 handset models from 140 network operators in 31 countries.

This month’s shelfshare report uses data from Q3 2011 to reveal:

- Smartphones accounted for 49% of global shelfshare with non-smartphones accounting for 46% of operator shelfshare.

- Smartphone presence in operator portfolios has doubled in three years and now the market is dominated by big brands. Mobile phone portfolios are being filled up with smartphones, tablets and USB dongles at all price points.

- The top five global smartphone shelfshares were held by Nokia at 22%, Samsung 17% and then HTC, RIM and Sony Ericsson each had around 10%. Together they occupied 75%.

- Samsung and Nokia also dominated non-smartphone global shelfshare at 27% and 22% respectively. Their nearest competitor was LG which achieved 14%.

- The regional analysis showed extremely different smartphone shelfshare trends in terms of the top ten market leaders outside of Europe. Top of the charts were RIM in North America at 27%, Nokia 22% of South America, Sharp 19% in Japan and Samsung with 20% in South Korea.