5G mobile phone chip market: many players are competing for the market, making plans, grabbing positions, and accelerating their pace

The 5G world is surging in 2019. The communications industry, all parties in the industrial chain, all parties in vertical industries, and even the entire society are crazy about it, and the chip war is even more turbulent.

With Intel announcing its withdrawal from 5G baseband chip research and development in the first half of this year, the world's 5G baseband chip suppliers are MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei and Unisoc. Huawei's Kirin 990 and Samsung's Exynos 980 are "challenging each other" on the world's first SoC, and MediaTek's Dimensity 1000 "intercepts" Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765/865, competing for the title of "the world's most powerful" 5G flagship mobile platform. At the same time, Unisoc's Ivy 510 5G chip has also reached commercial status.

The battle for 5G is spreading in both terminals and chips

The construction of 5G communication network is the unshirkable responsibility of the four major domestic operators. While operators are building networks on a large scale, mobile terminal manufacturers are also racing to release new products. After the first 5G mobile phone was launched in August 2019, the sales of 5G mobile phones grew rapidly. According to data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the domestic shipments of 5G mobile phones reached 5.074 million units in November 2019, a month-on-month increase of 103.4%. The industry boldly expects that the sales volume of 5G mobile phones will exceed 150 million units in 2020. The huge new market has stimulated the nerves of the industrial chain, and the competition from mobile phone manufacturers to chip manufacturers has quickly heated up.

On September 4, 2019, Samsung released the 5G processor Exynos 980, which combines a 5G communication modem with a high-performance mobile AP. Exynos 980 is manufactured using Samsung's 8nm FinFET process, with two 2.2GHz Cortex-A77 architecture cores, six 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 architecture cores, and a Mali-G76 MP5 GPU. Exynos 980 integrates a 5G baseband and supports NSA&SA dual-mode 5G networking. The peak download rate can reach 2.55Gbps in the Sub-6GHz frequency band, and the peak download rate can be further increased to 3.55Gbps in the 4G+5G dual connection state. On December 16, vivo released the X30 series of mobile phones equipped with Exynos 980, with a starting price of 3,298 yuan.

On September 6, 2019, Huawei simultaneously released the Kirin 990 5G SoC chip in China and Germany. The Kirin 990 supports two networking modes, NSA and SA. The CPU adopts a three-level energy efficiency architecture of 2 large cores + 2 medium cores + 4 small cores, with a maximum main frequency of 2.86GHz; the GPU adopts a 16-core Mali-G76, and the new system-level Smart Cache realizes intelligent diversion, effectively saving bandwidth and reducing power consumption; the NPU adopts the self-developed Da Vinci architecture, innovatively designed NPU dual large core + NPU micro-core computing architecture, the NPU large core shows excellent performance and energy efficiency, and the micro-core NPU achieves ultra-low power consumption. At 5G speed, the NR downlink rate is as high as 2.3Gbps and the NR uplink rate is as high as 1.26Gbps. On November 1, the Huawei Mate30 series equipped with Kirin 990 was first sold, with a starting price of 4999 yuan.

On November 26, 2019, before the 2019 Qualcomm Snapdragon Technology Summit, MediaTek released Dimensity 1000. At the press conference, MediaTek introduced that Dimensity 1000 is the world's first 5G single chip supporting 5G dual-carrier aggregation, the world's fastest 5G single chip, the world's most power-saving 5G baseband, the world's first 5G+5G dual-SIM dual standby, the world's first 5G single chip with integrated Wi-Fi 6, the world's most powerful GNSS satellite positioning and navigation system, the world's first chip based on the Cortex-A77 quad-core, the world's first in CPU multi-core running points, the world's first in GPU performance, and the world's first in AI performance.

On December 4, 2019, Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform and the first 5G SoC Snapdragon 765/765G. Although both support NSA/SA, Sub-6GHz/millimeter wave and other features, they have significantly improved AI computing and Elite gaming performance. However, the Snapdragon 865 does not have an internal 5G baseband chip and requires an external 5G modem X55 to support 5G. Qualcomm officials pointed out that compared with other manufacturers' 5G solutions, the Snapdragon 865+X55 will bring top features to 5G flagship terminals: Huawei's Kirin 990 is not as good as the Snapdragon 865 on the AP side; on the modem side, the Kirin 990 only supports frequency bands below 6GHz and 100MHz bandwidth. Although the Dimensity 1000 launched by MediaTek can support 200MHz bandwidth in the frequency band below 6GHz, it also does not support millimeter waves; on the AP side, its performance is not as good as that of Snapdragon 865. On December 10, Xiaomi's first 5G dual-mode mobile phone, the Redmi K30 series, was officially released, brutally lowering the starting price of 5G mobile phones to 1,999 yuan, but the release date will not be until January 7, 2020.

Interestingly, on December 26, OPPO released two 5G mobile phones at the same time, namely the Reno3 Pro equipped with Snapdragon 765G and the Reno3 equipped with Dimensity 1000L. Among them, the starting price of Reno3 Pro is 3999 yuan, and the price of Reno3 is 3399 yuan.

While the above four chip manufacturers were fighting, the 5G prototype equipped with Spreadtrum Ivy 510 passed the comprehensive verification of China Academy of Communications Technology Telecommunication Technology Laboratory and quietly entered the commercial state. The 5G multi-mode baseband chip Ivy 510 supports the three mainstream 5G frequency bands of Band 78, Band 79 and Band 41, supports 5G SA and NSA dual architectures, and can be widely used in various smart terminals such as smartphones, home CPE, cellular communication modules, VR/AR, etc. The 5G prototype submitted for inspection supports 5G mainstream frequency bands such as N41, N78 and N79, and has fully passed the tests in both SA and NSA networking modes, and supports technologies such as 2T4R, SRS antenna selection and high power.

The battle in 2020 continues

After 2019, when 5G started, 2020 will be a critical year for various players to gain global influence and maintain their dominance.

In the second half of 2019, Huawei has unsurprisingly become the biggest winner in 5G smartphones. However, as the only two companies among the above manufacturers that can provide complete end-to-end 5G solutions, Huawei will be self-sufficient in terms of chips for now or for a long time, while Samsung can further expand its sales scope.

"One person's misfortune may be another person's fortune." The same is true for companies. Take Huawei and Samsung as examples. The heavy blow suffered by the Chinese technology company in the world's largest economy has provided a good opportunity for its Korean competitors in the international market. And thanks to the commercial use of China's 5G and many added values ​​such as brand and honor, Huawei may enjoy the advantages of the domestic market in 2020.

On December 31, 2019, Huawei stated in its 2020 New Year's letter to all employees of the consumer business that the consumer business maintained rapid growth in 2019 and exceeded the business goals set at the beginning of the year. It is expected that Huawei's smartphone shipments will exceed 240 million units throughout the year, ranking second in the world. Facing the future, we must firmly build the HMS and Hongmeng ecosystem, rebuild the track, and restart the Long March: take survival as the bottom line and give priority to solving overseas ecological problems. Forge platform capabilities with terminals as the core, and achieve win-win results through smart hardware and developer ecological innovation to form a new system of "self-developed chips + Hongmeng OS".

As two independent chip manufacturers, the competition between MediaTek and Qualcomm for the "world's best performance" is also in full swing. The industry is still upset about Qualcomm's launch of a 5G plug-in solution after launching 4G SoC solutions for many years. In response to Qualcomm's millimeter wave and AP performance, MediaTek emphasized that integrated solutions are the mainstream of the market, and plug-ins need to solve the problems of heating and instability. "Even Apple, which has always adopted self-developed AP + external baseband, is very likely to move towards integration if it has its own baseband technology in the future."

Speaking of Apple, in April this year, the patent war between Apple and Qualcomm came to an end, and Apple gave up using Intel's baseband chips and returned to Qualcomm. Bank of America analyst Tal Liani said that Qualcomm's X55 5G baseband will be the only choice for iPhone 12, and before 2022, Apple's 5G mobile phone baseband will all come from Qualcomm, which will bring Qualcomm at least $4 billion in revenue.

At the customer level, Qualcomm announced that there are more than 230 terminal designs equipped with Qualcomm 5G solutions worldwide; MediaTek did not disclose the specific number of partners, but according to reports from Taiwan, MediaTek's "ambition" for 2020 is to ship 60 million 5G chips.

Looking back at the replacement cycle from 3G to 4G, when the price of 4G mobile phones dropped below 2,000 yuan, the penetration rate of 4G mobile phones began to increase rapidly. As Xiaomi has lowered the price of 5G mobile phones to the iconic price of 1,999, major mobile phone manufacturers may follow suit and launch lower-priced 5G mobile phones in order to maintain their competitiveness, thereby accelerating the arrival of the "5G thousand-yuan phone" era and detonating the 5G market. When real competition unfolds in the popular market, domestic chips such as Unisoc may gain an increased weight in terminal manufacturers' 5G choices.

The industry expects that by 2022, the cumulative global shipments of 5G smartphones are expected to exceed 1.4 billion. The larger the market, the greater the opportunities, and the more intense the competition. Since 5G chips are more complex in design and process than any previous generation, with higher difficulty and cost, this battle requires more strength and determination, as well as long-term insight and vision. The rally has just started, and after quickly grabbing a position, performance, price, the ability to innovate and the speed have become new variables. Compared with shouting in the air, running at full speed is more important. After all, the market is the only criterion for testing cost performance.