Are chips really that important? What are the chances of Xiaomi winning by betting big on Pinecone chips?

Although the chip is small and seems to have no technical content, most of the profits of domestic mobile phones are used to purchase it (mobile phone sales are good, but in a sense, it is working for the chip manufacturer), so-called "concentration is the essence".

After the Spring Festival holiday, Xiaomi announced on February 4 that due to fluctuations in the RMB exchange rate, rising component costs, and tight supply in the upstream supply chain, the price of the entire Redmi 4A and 4 series would increase by 100 yuan.

Later, industry insiders said that the biggest advantage of Huawei's mobile phone sales exceeding Xiaomi in 2016 was that Huawei had its own Kirin series processors and its lifeline was in its own hands. But is this really the case? Compared with overseas mobile phone chips, how much advantage do domestic mobile phone chips have?

Qualcomm is the global chip leader, leading the industry in CPU, GPU and baseband. It also has many partners around the world, all of whom are vying to get the first launch rights of the new Snapdragon processor, which is basically the first choice for Samsung and domestic high-end flagship models. Recently, it launched the Gigabit LTE chip Snapdragon X20, with a theoretical download rate of up to 1.2Gbps.

In addition, Samsung's Exynos series processors are generally self-sufficient, except for a small amount supplied to Meizu. For example, the Meizu flagship Pro 6 Plus released at the end of last year was equipped with a Samsung Exynos 8890 processor. However, due to the lack of baseband, Samsung Exynos does not support full network access.

In terms of domestic chips, Huawei HiSilicon is the first, and its technical level is gradually catching up with Qualcomm, and it can fully support all network access (LT ECat12/Cat13 baseband). For example, the Kirin 960 released at the end of last year is comparable to Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 in CPU and GPU performance. However, Huawei HiSilicon chips are currently only supplied to Huawei's own mobile phones. In this way, Huawei can update its mobile phone product line according to its own plan and control the production capacity of new models.

Spreadtrum (world's third largest) focuses on the mid-range market. Its most advanced octa-core chip SC9860 (LT ECat7 baseband) is equivalent to the mid-range chips of Qualcomm and Huawei HiSilicon. Currently, Spreadtrum is a chip supplier for Samsung. Its advantage lies in that the baseband technology of Spreadtrum chips supports five modes (TD-LTE/FDD-LTE/TD-SCDMA/WCDMA) except CDMA.

The processor performance of Taiwan's chip company MediaTek is not very advanced, and its baseband technology lags behind Huawei HiSilicon and Qualcomm, but it always has many "industry-leading" features to gain unique advantages, such as the world's first deca-core chip HelioX 30, the first three-cluster architecture chip, and so on.

AnTuTu data shows that in the global mobile phone market in 2016, Qualcomm's share was as high as 57.41%, and Huawei HiSilicon's share was 5.73%. It is unknown how much pressure Xiaomi, which has always been known for its "performance fever", will face when launching its first mobile phone chip.

It is said that after Huawei HiSilicon Kirin and Spreadtrum processors, another domestic chip to be released on February 28th - Xiaomi Pinecone processor does not have an integrated baseband, and its processor is also an octa-core A53 architecture, and its performance is estimated to be comparable to Spreadtrum SC9860.

But there are also reports that the Pinecone processor also has a high-end version, model V970, which uses a 10nm process and has 4 A73 cores + 4 A53 cores. The main frequency of the large core reaches 2.7GHz and the main frequency of the small core is 2.0GHz. The performance is comparable to Huawei HiSilicon's Kirin 960 and is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter of this year.

However, the baseband is currently the most technically difficult part of a mobile phone chip, and Apple's A series, which ranks first in mobile processor performance, still does not have its own baseband; at the same time, it took Huawei HiSilicon almost six years from the launch of its first chip, K3, to the stable Kirin 920.

Therefore, Xiaomi Pinecone processor still has a long way to go. Recently, Dong Mingzhu also revealed that Gree's own mobile phone chip will be released soon. We also believe that in the near future, domestic chips will also have a place in the international market.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.