Apple's "chip autonomy" strategy or expanded to the front end of the RADIO frequency, Broadcom Qualcomm has a crisis

Apple's self-developed chips have long been no secret, and its self-developed chips have been increasingly seen in Apple's various product lines, including A-series smart phone SoCs, M-series computer processors, and T-series security chips, Bluetooth headset main chips, power management chips, etc. This time, Apple has expanded the scope of self-research to wireless chips such as rfoinces. With the expansion of 5G communication technology, the role played by wireless chips such as RF front-ends is becoming more and more critical, and the market size is getting larger and larger. Apple has increased its efforts to develop its own RF front-end chips, which will have an important impact on the original industrial pattern of RF front-ends.

The scope of self-research has been extended to the RF front end, and Skyworks and others have crises

Recently, it is reported that Apple is recruiting wireless network system single chip (SoC), baseband chip, RF chip, Bluetooth, WiFi chip engineers for its newly established office in Southern California, which may eventually replace components supplied by Broadcom, Skyworks and Qualcomm.

Affected by this, the share price of Skyworks, the world's largest RF front-end supplier, fell 11% on December 16, local time, the largest intraday decline since March 2020, and finally closed at $146.39. It is understood that nearly 60% of Skyworks' revenue comes from Apple. On the other hand, iPhone baseband chip supplier Qualcomm also fell 5.88%, closing at $178.15.

In recent years, Apple has continuously strengthened the strength of self-developed chips. In 2020, Apple released the M1 chip for some Mac and iPad devices, which largely replaced Intel's processors. Apple's self-developed A-Series is one of the largest smartphone SoCs in the global market. Apple is also continuing to increase the intensity of self-developed baseband chips, it acquired Intel's mobile phone baseband chip business in 2019, and began to develop 5G baseband chips to get rid of its dependence on Qualcomm baseband chips, but the time node for commercial use has not yet been disclosed.

This news shows that Apple is expanding the scope of self-research to the field of RF front-end chips. The RF front end is an important part of the mobile phone wireless communication module. The wireless communication module of the mobile phone mainly includes four parts: antenna, RF front end, RF transceiver and baseband, and the RF front end is mainly to filter and amplify the RF signal, and together with other communication modules to form the up/downlink of signal transceiver.

With the advent of the 5G era, the demand for front-end RF chips has increased significantly. Some experts pointed out that the main way to improve transmission speed in the 5G era is to unlock high-frequency band resources to obtain greater bandwidth, and increase the number of channels to improve the efficiency of using frequency bands. 2G~4G mainly uses the 600MHz~3GHz band, and 5G is extended to sub-6GHz and millimeter wave bands. At the same time, the current 5G mobile phones generally need to support more than 5 5G bands, up to 17 5G bands.

Supporting these newly added high-band resources requires the addition of RF front-end devices to match them. As a result, the RF front-end market is expected to reach $27.3 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 16% from 2020 to 2024.

This is also an important reason why Apple is determined to develop its own RF front-end chip.

Accelerating the trend of industrial concentration, whether it can be done is still suspenseful

From the analysis of the industrial pattern, in the 3G era, in order to save PCB area and reduce the difficulty of research and development of mobile phone manufacturers, the RF front end has gradually moved from discrete devices to modules. During this period, FEMiD, a passive device integration product led by Japanese manufacturers, was the mainstream (mainly integrated filters and switches), while European and American manufacturers continued to study active device products such as power amplifiers, and the two sides were clearly distinguished. However, in the 4G era, terminal manufacturers have further integration needs for modules such as power amplifiers and filters, which has promoted the merger and integration of active manufacturers and passive manufacturers, and gradually born four RF front-end giants with full product lines of power amplifiers, filters and switches Qorvo, Skyworks, Broadcom (Avago), and Murata.

Expert analysis pointed out that Apple's self-developed RF front-end chip is not contrary to the trend of industrial concentration, but further develops in the direction of centralization. In fact, communication chip giants such as Qualcomm are also strengthening their RF front-end research and development, and packaging related products into their baseband chips and SoCs. In the future, the field of smartphone SoCs will further extend to wireless communications such as radio frequencies.

However, Apple has entered a new field, and it is not easy to do well. Previously, the setback of Apple's self-developed GPU was a lesson for the past. At first, Apple's processors were powered by British design firm Imagination's GPU cores. In 2017, Apple began to develop its own GPU. The move led to a significant drop in Imagination revenue. However, Apple's path to GPU self-development is not smooth, and in 2020, Apple has to choose to re-cooperate with Imagination to reach a new licensing agreement.

In order to meet the needs of supporting more frequency bands and higher bandwidth, rf frequency front ends have embarked on a highly integrated and modular path in the development process. With the advent of millimeter wave communication in the future, the technical threshold will be further raised. Qian Yongxue, chairman and general manager of Beijing Onry Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., once pointed out that the RF front end is an important component of the mobile industry, but the RF front end also poses two major challenges: one is the relatively high demand for new materials; the other is the higher demand for packaging, because its integration is very high. RF manufacturers should not only improve the performance of various RF products such as power amplifiers, filters, switches, and amplifiers, but also take into account compatibility and consistency issues. This is a challenge for new entrants to overcome.