Mobile phone processors: basically all have to be clean
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When Nokia, Blackberry, and Motorola fell one after another in the smartphone market and were forced to sell or struggle, the same is true for mobile phone chips that are closely related to the smartphone industry. Recently, the news that Broadcom withdrew from the mobile phone chip (mobile phone baseband chip) market once again showed us the fierce and cruel competition in the smartphone industry. In fact, long before Broadcom, fierce competition has forced many companies to choose to withdraw from the mobile phone baseband chip market, such as Texas Instruments Inc, ST Microelectronics NV, Ericsson, NVIDIA (this is just a bad situation and cannot be considered as withdrawal), etc., and as competition intensifies, there will be related manufacturers who will not be able to escape the fate of withdrawing from the mobile phone chip market in the future. The general trend is gone, and all that is left is a sigh. Coincidentally, at the same time that Broadcom frustratedly withdrew from the mobile phone chip market, Huawei released the world's first 8-core LTE Cat.6 mobile phone chip Kirin 920 in a high-profile manner, and it was highly praised by the industry. Behind this entry and exit, what kind of survival and development model of the mobile phone chip industry is reflected? Who is likely to survive and even develop in the future mobile phone chip market? As we all know, in the chip industry (not just mobile phone chips), technology, scale, and capital are the three elements for its survival and development. These characteristics have been verified in the traditional PC chip industry, which was once the largest. In the early and middle stages of AMD's competition with Intel in the PC market, the two sides were technically evenly matched, but in the end, due to the shortcomings of scale and capital, they were greatly surpassed by Intel. This is also the case in today's mobile phone chip market. Judging from the current competitive landscape of the mobile phone chip market, only Qualcomm truly possesses all three elements. In terms of technology, Qualcomm far exceeds its competitors in terms of scale, whether in APs that are closely related to mobile phone chips, baseband chips, or important SoC integration capabilities. Qualcomm currently ranks first in market share and revenue in the AP and baseband chip markets, and is far ahead of its competitors. In the baseband chip market, the latest report from Strategy Analytics shows that Qualcomm ranks first with a revenue market share of 66%, while MediaTek and Intel rank second and third with 12% and 7% respectively. In the 2013 revenue ranking of the world's top 25 fabless IC design companies released by market research agency IC Insights, Qualcomm ranks first with an annual revenue of US$17.2 billion, more than twice the US$8.219 billion of Broadcom, which ranks second. Since it has leading technology and scale, funding (whether it is early or subsequent R&D investment) is naturally not a problem, and it will continue to form a positive cycle effect of technology, scale, and funding. Next, let's take a look at MediaTek (MTK), the so-called biggest rival of Qualcomm. Since the 2G era, MediaTek has formed the Turn Key model, the foundation of its existence and development. This model is quite popular among mobile phone manufacturers because of its low price. Entering the 3G era, this model is still the model that MediaTek relies on, but the only difference is that Qualcomm, the leader of the mobile phone chip industry, has also begun to exert its strength on a similar model, namely Qualcomm's QRD, and Qualcomm has covered this model in high, medium and low-end. According to Qualcomm's explanation, Qualcomm's mobile phone chips will be fully QRD in the future. Although Qualcomm's QRD cost-effectiveness in the low-end market may not exceed MediaTek's Turn Key (after all, this is MediaTek's specialty since the 2G era), however, due to Qualcomm's full QRD, and with the need for smartphone manufacturers to increase revenue and profits (more high-end QRD solutions will be adopted), Qualcomm's QRD advantage in the high-end will inevitably pass on pressure to the low-end market, and then the only way MediaTek can deal with it is to improve the cost-effectiveness of the Turn Key model, but in this way, its revenue and profits will be under greater pressure than before. Therefore, to some extent, the future of MediaTek depends on how Qualcomm develops its own QRD model in the future, which means that the future fate of MediaTek is half in the hands of its rival Qualcomm. However, from the perspective of the future, MediaTek's advantage in scale will still allow it to occupy a place in the smartphone market. In addition to Qualcomm and MediaTek, unfortunately, we believe that there will be no room for a third company to survive in the open ARM architecture mobile phone chip market. Of course, in addition to Qualcomm and MediaTek's chips, there is another type of mobile phone chips or companies that have the possibility of survival, that is, self-sufficient Apple, Samsung and HiSilicon. If we still measure it by the three elements, Apple has proved its technical strength in mobile phone chips to the industry by launching the industry's first 64-bit A7 mobile phone chip. As for scale, its annual sales of more than 100 million iPhones and tens of millions of iPads are enough to support its survival and development, and as for funds, we still need to say this, you know. Looking at Samsung again, to be precise, Samsung's mobile phones are not purely self-sufficient, because in addition to its own smartphones, other mobile phone manufacturers are also using them, which is different from the previous Qualcomm and MediaTek pure open market mobile phone chips and Apple's pure self-sufficiency. However, given the huge shipment volume of Samsung smartphones, even if it is not as good as Qualcomm and MediaTek (shipments) in the open market, it is enough to reach the scale required for survival and development by digesting some of its own smartphones. Speaking of funds, similar to Apple, Samsung is not short of money. There is also HiSilicon of China's Huawei. Compared with Apple and Samsung, HiSilicon's situation is more embarrassing. This embarrassment is mainly reflected in whether it can reach the scale required for survival if it follows the current completely self-sufficient development model? After all, from the perspective of self-sufficiency, Huawei only uses its own HiSilicon chips in a small number of its own models. This can be seen from the recent release of the Kirin 920 chip, which revealed that HiSilicon chips have been on the market for 8 years and have only shipped 15 million smartphones. This is also the main reason why the industry has been discussing whether HiSilicon should develop independently and go to the open market if it wants to grow and become stronger. However, Huawei also said at the Kirin 920 launch conference that HiSilicon chips will only be used by itself in the short term. Not only the industry, but also Huawei itself seems to be worried that if HiSilicon goes to the open market, with its current brand influence and technology in the industry, will third-party mobile phone manufacturers adopt it? Even if there are, to what extent? In addition, it should be added that when it comes to scale, according to the revenue ranking of the top 25 global fabless IC design companies in 2013 released by IC Insights, HiSilicon's annual revenue in 2013 was US$1.355 billion, ranking 12th, only about 8% and 30% of Qualcomm and MediaTek's revenue. As for technology, although the industry believes that HiSilicon has caught up with and even surpassed Qualcomm, the leader in mobile phone chips, from the recent release of Kirin 920, we would like to remind you that the 64-bit Snapdragon 800 series (808 and 810) chips for Qualcomm's recently released flagship devices will use ARM's Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 hybrid architecture and 20nm process. In comparison, Kirin 920 is only ARM's Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 architecture and 28nm process. Therefore, whether HiSilicon can finally gain a foothold in the mobile phone chip market, it still faces arduous challenges (technology, scale, etc.). Finally, the biggest suspense is Intel, which is completely different from the above manufacturers. The reason why we call it completely different is that it uses its own X86 architecture in the mobile phone chip market. Due to the architecture and market perception, Intel's technology and MediaTek's price-performance ratio in the smartphone market are far behind. Although Intel revealed to the public at the just concluded 2014 Taipei Computer Show that it will ship a SoC chip codenamed SoFIA that integrates GPU, video and ISP units and 2G/3G baseband in the fourth quarter of this year, and will release the 4G version of SoFIA in the first quarter of next year, Intel's pace is obviously nearly a year behind its competitors. Although Intel said that there will still be 60% of the 3G smartphone market next year, the lower price advantage of its competitors in 3G mobile phone chips is likely to make Intel's mobile phone chip cost a fatal shortcoming again. From this point of view, the technical sluggishness and the negative effects of scale caused by high costs, Intel's only remaining advantage is capital. That is, as the leader of the global chip industry, Intel has strong financial strength. This depends on Intel's determination in the mobile phone chip market. If it insists on occupying a place in this market, relying on its financial strength to fight a war of attrition, and its increase in the mobile phone chip market, it is not impossible for it to survive. Based on the above analysis, we believe that in the future mobile phone chip market, the manufacturers that can be sure to survive in the open market will be Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung; Apple chips will exist independently; HiSilicon and Intel are uncertain. As for other manufacturers, it is better to make plans early. Here, some people may question why manufacturers such as Spreadtrum and Marvell are not included in the analysis? What we want to ask is, compared with Qualcomm and MediaTek, what differentiated advantages do they have? In fact, according to the industry's prediction that only two or three companies can survive and develop in the future mobile phone chip market, our prediction is already quite optimistic. 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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