Since Intel acquired Infineon’s wireless arm, there have been severely limited options for handset makers looking for third party suppliers of multiband RF transceiver chips. Maxim, the analog and mixed-signal chip vendor, has spotted the gap in the market, and last month it acquired a start-up in the field, the UK’s GenASIC to broaden its RF portfolio. As Will Strauss of semiconductor analyst firm Forward Concepts points out, many major baseband suppliers have their own LTE RF transceivers, Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson among them, as well as smaller 4G specialists like Altair. And they can turn to independents like Lime Microsystems or Fujitsu for LTE transceivers ‘ but the choice narrows when it comes to multimode LTE/3G, which is GenASIC’s competitive…