Review of 5G chips in 2020: Old players play new copies, no one is left behind

If 2019 is the first year of 5G commercialization, then 2020 will be the first year of 5G scale expansion. As 5G commercial networks are blossoming around the world, 5G is enabling more abundant terminals and use cases, expanding 5G applications from smartphones to thousands of industries and accelerating the digital transformation of industries.

In order to better review the gratifying achievements made by the industry in the first year of 5G scale expansion and promote the further accelerated development of 5G in the future, as a top professional media in the industry with millions of precise users, C114 plans to launch a large-scale planned special report "2020-5G Expansion Year", conduct a year-end review of the 5G industry in the first year of expansion, and work together to promote the rapid and high-quality development of the 5G industry.

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C114 News, January 5 (Nanshan) 5G mobile phone chips (hereinafter referred to as "5G chips"), as the core components for 5G to move towards large-scale commercial use, are at the forefront of the ever-changing international situation in 2020, stirring up the mobile phone industry.

Political factors have brought disasters, but the industry is still thriving. By November 2020, the shipment of 5G mobile phones in the Chinese market reached 144 million units, and the annual shipment will certainly exceed 150 million units, reaching the highest expectations of all market institutions and major manufacturers at the end of 2019. The high performance and cost reduction of 5G chips have promoted the launch of 5G thousand-yuan phones and the large-scale popularization of users, which can be said to be "hard work and great contribution".

Although not directly oriented to consumers like 5G mobile phones, 5G chips "come with their own traffic" and remain popular, attracting people's attention. So, in this market with extremely high technical barriers, talent barriers, and capital barriers, what kind of competition and development pattern will be presented in 2020?

Old Players·Chronicle

The three high thresholds have stopped those who are eager to try. The 5G chip market in 2020 is still the survivors of the 4G era, including independent chip manufacturers Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Spreadtrum, as well as the chip organizations of the three most powerful mobile phone manufacturers - Apple, Huawei, and Samsung. It can be said that old players are playing new copies.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865, released in December 2019, achieved great success in the high-end 5G mobile phone market in 2020. It once became the only choice on the open market. Two months after its launch, it was adopted by more than 70 5G mobile phones, making MediaTek's Dimensity 1000 series unpopular. The Snapdragon 888, launched a year later in December 2020, "hopes that the whole world will share in China's joy and prosper all the way", showing its full sincerity towards China, the world's largest 5G mobile phone market, and won the support of 14 mobile phone manufacturers.

MediaTek started low and ended high in 2020. Although the market performance of its first 5G chip Dimensity 1000 was not satisfactory, MediaTek quickly opened up the market with a full range of Dimensity products covering high, medium and low-end products. For example, the Dimensity 800 series released in the second quarter had a brilliant market performance. MediaTek expects that the shipment volume of Dimensity series 5G chips will reach 45 million sets in 2020.

Spreadtrum, which is relatively weak in overall strength, has made great progress in the 5G era. In the early stage of commercial use, it released the 5G baseband Springtrum V510 and the 5G SoC chip Tiger T7510, standing on the same track as Qualcomm and MediaTek. In addition, Spreadtrum received capital injection from industrial capital such as the second phase of the "Big Fund" in 2020, and will be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, reserving rich ammunition for the long-term competition in 5G.

Among the three major mobile phone manufacturers, Apple's self-developed 5G baseband and Samsung's attempt to sell 5G chips are just the beginning. The tragic protagonist is Huawei's HiSilicon Semiconductor. The Kirin 990 launched in 2020 ranked first in China Mobile's 2020 smart hardware quality report with excellent overall performance. However, the strong will be jealous, and facing the sanctions of the US national force, we will have to wait and see when the Kirin series 5G chips will return to spring.

No one in, no one left behind

5G is creating a new market worth one trillion dollars, like a glittering gold mine, attracting the attention of all walks of life. There are many players in each link of the entire industrial ecological chain, but on the mobile phone chip side, there are no new faces so far, and Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Unisoc are still playing the "Friends" game.

No one is entering the market because the threshold is too high. How does 5G raise the threshold for mobile phone chips? On the one hand, the technology is more complicated. 5G is not a castle in the air, but is built on the basis of 2/3/4G technology and the accumulation of these networks. This requires new players to not only invest heavily in the research and development of 5G chip technology, but also invest a lot of manpower, financial resources, and time to understand hundreds of communication networks around the world. On the other hand, mobile phone chips pursue the most advanced process technology. It is reported that the cost of 7nm tape-out is 200 million yuan, and 5nm is as high as 300 million yuan. This kind of money-burning gameplay is too much for even chip giants such as Broadcom and Intel.

The three manufacturers with deep foundations are in a familiar game with no one left behind. According to the mobile phone chip market report for the third quarter of 2020 released by the research institution Counterpoint, MediaTek ranked first with a 31% share, topping the list for the first time. Qualcomm's share fell to second, but it still leads the pure 5G chip market with a 39% share, which can be said to be a harvest of the past. Unisoc's share also increased from 3% to 4%.

In C114's view, Qualcomm's strong investment in 5G technology has become a key factor in its ultimate lead. It is reported that Qualcomm's cumulative R&D investment has reached 66 billion US dollars. This has led to a patent settlement between Qualcomm and Huawei this year, which has won greater cooperation possibilities. In addition, Qualcomm attaches great importance to the Chinese market, and has actively reduced the price of 5G chips to compete for the market. Compared with the high-coldness in the early days of 4G, it can be said that it has "lowered its status" and has received support from more brands.

MediaTek's success in the early days of 5G is almost the same as Qualcomm's, and it also benefits from its high attention to the Chinese market and high-intensity R&D. In 2020 alone, R&D expenses reached a record high of US$2.5 billion, which is expected to account for 25% of revenue. In 2020, Spreadtrum took a different approach and chose TSMC's 6nm process to avoid competing with large manufacturers while obtaining the guarantee of high-end process. On the other hand, it did a lot of work on the market side, such as taking the lead in synchronizing Android 11 upgrades and shouting the slogan of "People's 5G", which increased its visibility.

150% incremental market

China Mobile Terminal Laboratory summarized the 5G chips in 2020. "After the large-scale development of 5G, industry efforts and SA breakthroughs, the overall maturity of 5G chips has been significantly improved compared with 2019, and has met the current 5G commercial needs. It can provide users with continuous high-speed data transmission experience, stable voice calls and good power consumption performance in complex networking environments."

In detail, all chip manufacturers benefited from this in 2020 and achieved good growth. There are multiple factors. The most important is the extremely strong demand for 200 million 5G mobile phones, which exploded from a negligible level in 2019. In addition, HiSilicon was restricted and its talents could not be fully utilized, which led to Huawei's expansion of external procurement and increased the performance of several chip manufacturers.

According to industry forecasts, the 5G mobile phone market size in 2021 will be around 500 million units, an increase of 150% compared to 2020. Behind the bigger pie, there will be fierce competition. The addition of 700M and millimeter wave frequency bands will make 5G chip design more complicated; the emergence of possible 5G "killer applications" such as cloud gaming will require 5G mobile phones to have more affordable prices, higher performance, and lower power consumption. Next year's 5G chip market will definitely be exciting.