Competition in mobile phone processors escalates: Huawei HiSilicon's eight-core processor emerges

Competition in mobile phone processors escalates: Huawei HiSilicon's eight-core processor emerges
The mobile phone chip industry is undergoing a new round of adjustments. Industry insiders believe that in the foreseeable future, a situation will be formed where multiple oligopolies occupy most of the market, and companies that are powerless in terms of capital, technology, and market will be eliminated. ADI, LSI, Freescale, Infineon, ST Ericsson, Texas Instruments, and Nvidia have already withdrawn or shifted their focus to other areas. A new name is now added to this long list of "eliminations" - Broadcom. Recently, Broadcom announced that it would abandon its mobile phone baseband business and seek to sell or close it. Less than three quarters ago, Broadcom had just announced the completion of its acquisition of Renesas Electronics' LTE technology-related assets. However, when it was ready to make a big move in the market, the burden of capital became the last straw that broke the camel's back. Broadcom said that this business would cost $700 million a year. Despite such a large capital expenditure, there is no shortage of new entrants into the market. In order to reduce resistance, technology patents are their best weapon to tear open the market. At the Asia Mobile Expo held last week, Ericsson returned to the mobile terminal market with a five-mode multi-band baseband chip. This is because when ST-Ericsson was split, some of its LTE patents eventually belonged to Ericsson. At the same time, Huawei launched the Kirin series of chips in a high-profile manner, and its main feature is differentiated technology. As for companies with relatively stable market share such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and Intel, they occupy the market in a certain segment and hope to open up new market space. Among them, Intel’s announcement of joining forces with Rockchip is seen by the industry as a means to strengthen market competitiveness. In addition to mobile phones, wearable devices and the Internet of Things may become the next development direction of these companies. Broadcom Withdraws On June 2, Broadcom announced that it would abandon its mobile phone baseband business. Gartner analyst Sheng Linghai said that similar to the withdrawal of Texas Instruments, due to the lack of competitiveness of baseband chips and the high customer concentration, even if it has a certain market share, the profit return and the risk of losing market share in the future prompted Broadcom to make this decision. GfK China analyst Wu Xiaofeng also said that the low-end price of the global mobile phone market has become the focus of market competition. At the same time, the product life cycle is constantly shortening, which puts higher requirements on chip manufacturers in terms of integration and compatibility. Broadcom said that up to $700 million was invested in R&D and marketing expenses, including supporting a team of engineers with more than a thousand people. Strategy Analytics analyst Sravan Kundojjala gave a more direct estimate that Broadcom has invested a total of $3 billion in this field since 2007. However, this huge investment has not brought any benefits. ODM manufacturer Blue Coast Communications President He Tao further pointed out that using Broadcom's reference design, the product production cycle is too long, which will lead to a decline in competitiveness. Broadcom's promise is that it will take three months from R&D to market, but the industry's usual standard is several weeks. It is precisely because of this that Broadcom's withdrawal has limited impact on the ARM camp. There are also concerns about the entry of new products. Just when Broadcom withdrew in frustration, two major telecommunications equipment manufacturers, Ericsson and Huawei, successively released their mobile phone chip products to the outside world, announcing a new beginning. The first batch of terminal devices integrating Ericsson's new products will be officially launched in the second half of this year. After announcing the news, Chang Gang, Chief Marketing Officer of Ericsson China, said that the chip is an indispensable part of the end-to-end strategy of the resurgence of chips, and the announcement of the launch at this time point is because the industry has ignored it. However, although Ericsson has inherited the relevant product and technology patents of ST Ericsson on LTE, it has also continued its development problems, namely the launch rhythm and cycle of the latest products, and how to obtain the recognition of terminal manufacturers. Before the split, one of the most important partners of ST Ericsson in China was Shanda Guoke, not a mainstream manufacturer. As for Huawei, it is even more rare to promote its chip business. The launch of the "Kirin" brand, some industry insiders said, is aimed directly at Qualcomm's Snapdragon, changing its previous low-key style. In fact, in promoting this new product, Huawei emphasized the requirements of cutting-edge products in the mobile phone industry such as octa-core and 4G, and also emphasized "the world's first support for Cat6", which means that its download peak can reach 300M. At present, Qualcomm and MediaTek have not yet shipped related products. However, compared with Apple and Samsung, Huawei, which also uses chips for its own products, is in a very awkward situation because the latter only uses HiSilicon chips in a small number of models. The information revealed at this press conference shows that although HiSilicon chips have been on the market for 8 years, the shipment of smartphones equipped with its chips is only 15 million units, while Huawei's smartphone shipments in 2013 were 52 million units. In addition to the brand restricting the selection of third-party mobile phone manufacturers, Huawei HiSilicon is still relatively backward in process technology. The flagship series 808 and 810 chips recently released by Qualcomm use the hybrid architecture of ARM A57he53 and the 20nm process, while Kirin is only the A15 and A7 architecture and the 28nm process. This means that whether Huawei HiSilicon can gain market recognition as desired still needs to face multiple challenges. The pattern has changed Although the current market is still bustling, most analysts say that its future pattern has gradually become clear. Sheng Linghai said that Qualcomm and MediaTek in the ARM camp will further increase their dominance in the market except for Apple and Samsung. "It is foreseeable that other companies that cannot compete will gradually reduce their investment in the mainstream market and shift their focus to other professional markets." This judgment is made because Qualcomm is fully covering its reference design (Qualcomm calls it QRD) with its entire product line, and mobile phone manufacturers will strengthen their demand for reference design in order to increase revenue and profits, which will make Qualcomm's reference design have an advantage in the mid-to-high-end product line and expand to the low-end market. However, MediaTek's cost-effectiveness will also help it cope with the impact of Qualcomm, and from the information conveyed in some public occasions, MediaTek's focus in the future will be on the mid-range product line. As for Intel, which has returned to the chip field, it should not be underestimated. Although Intel seems to be struggling in the smartphone market, according to data monitored by Strategy Analytics, Intel has risen from the bottom of the smartphone chip market in the first half of 2012 to the third place in its latest report. In addition, Intel recently announced a strategic agreement with Rockchip. Although the main products of the cooperation are currently for entry-level and cost-effective tablets, some industry insiders believe that it will be possible to expand to smartphones in the future. The reason is that the SoFIA product series is an integrated mobile system chip developed by Intel for the entry-level and cost-effective smartphone and tablet markets, and the system chip represents the development direction of smartphone chips; Intel CEO Krzanich has also repeatedly expressed his hope to increase its global market share in the mobile market faster and in multiple ways. For the mobile phone chip industry, in the foreseeable future, there will definitely be manufacturers announcing their withdrawal. As for who can win the survival space, capital, technology, and market are indispensable.

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.

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