Based on its recent analysis of the oscilloscopes market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Rohde & Schwarz with the 2015 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership. Within just five years of entering the oscilloscope market, Rohde & Schwarz developed an impressive product portfolio that helped it expand its global footprint. Recognizing early on that penetrating this market would be a challenge, Rohde & Schwarz focused on making value additions to its solutions by offering new capabilities and/or enhancing existing solutions.
Rohde & Schwarz is looking to ascend to the leadership position in the test and measurement industry by complementing its frequency domain portfolio with time domain products. The R&S RTO, R&S RTE, R&S RTM and R&S HMO oscilloscope product families are strategic additions to Rohde & Schwarz’s test and measurement product line-up that are the result of a thorough review of the market needs and dynamics. Although relatively smaller than its key competitors, it is now ranked fourth on the oscilloscope market leaderboard and is perceived as a formidable competitor.
“Rohde & Schwarz is especially strong in product innovation and has built on this reputation in the oscilloscope market,” said Frost & Sullivan Industry Director Jessy Cavazos. “It has diligently developed an extensive portfolio of oscilloscopes that include several product lines covering a wide range of end users, from design engineers performing research, to customers looking only to make basic measurements.”
Its product lines offer distinct performance levels in terms of bandwidth, sample rate, memory, and analysis tools, at different price points. The high-end R&S RTO product line consists of models that deliver up to 4 GHz of bandwidth, while its R&S RTE up to 2 GHz and R&S RTM up to 1 GHz comprise a more economical range of products. The portfolio is complete at the lower end with three R&S HMO product series, starting with 50 MHz of bandwidth.
“There is growing demand for higher resolution from mid-range oscilloscopes that provide customers with insights into their designs and enables them to access details. Responding to this need, Rohde & Schwarz introduced a HD mode for its R&S RTO and R&S RTE product lines,” noted Cavazos. “By lowering the noise level and increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), Rohde & Schwarz helps design engineers to visualise details that were previously covered by noise.”
To address the demand for greater resolution from oscilloscopes, Rohde & Schwarz has adopted a system-level approach, wherein it optimises the whole system using low-pass filtering after the analogue-to-digital converter (ADC), and a very powerful processing architecture in the application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC). The company has particularly focused on non-linearity while designing its solution. In HD mode, the R&S RTO and R&S RTE oscilloscopes can provide up to 16 bits of resolution.
Resourcefully, Rohde & Schwarz has made rapid inroads into the oscilloscope market, propelled by its reputation in the signal generator, spectrum analyser, and network analyser markets. As its products’ engineering is aligned with the needs of its customer base, it is regarded as a leading participant in the real-time oscilloscope market.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has leveraged competitive intelligence to successfully execute a competitive strategy that results in stronger market share, competitive brand positioning and customer satisfaction.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
