Zhirong Technology: Analog chips need to be invested for a long time, and do not compete for a long time

At the "2022 3rd China Semiconductor Investment Alliance Annual Conference and China IC List Awards Ceremony" jointly organized by China Semiconductor Investment Alliance and Aijiwei, Zhuhai Zhirong Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhirong Technology") won the "Annual Best Innovative Product Award".

In recent years, with the acceleration of domestic substitution, a number of innovative brands competing with international manufacturers have emerged in the field of domestic power management chips, and in the emerging field of USB Type-C fast charging, Zhirong Technology is undoubtedly one of the new stars.

Rise fast

Although Zhirong Technology was established for only 7 years, it has become famous in the fast charging industry.

At the beginning of its establishment, after careful consideration by the team, Zhirong Technology established the application scenario of consumer electronics fast charging as the market entry point, and began to independently develop fast charging chips. Facts have proved that Zhirong chose the right direction, in 2017 Apple iPhone8 released, support 18 wattS PD fast charging, which is a very important time node, with the industry's first mobile power supply SoC chip that supports 18-watt fast charging in advance layout, Zhirong Technology quickly occupied the market and rose rapidly. In the five years from 2016 to 2021, it continued to lead the fast charging market, took the lead in launching a number of explosive products such as PD fast charging mobile power chip, multi-port dynamic power distribution charging chip, PD multi-protocol fast charging controller, wireless charging and transmitting chip, etc. The models sold well, achieving the industry story of "smart financial production, must be a boutique", and becoming a pioneer role in the field of fast charging chips.

It is reported that since the launch of Zhirong Technology Fast Charging products, the cumulative shipment volume has reached the level of 100 million, and the cooperative customers include Huawei, OPPO, Qualcomm, Bull, ZTE, Lenovo, Anker and other well-known enterprises. In some segments, such as fast charging mobile power banks and gallium nitride multi-port fast charging, it has a high market share and has become the "leader" in this segment.

It can be said that the success of Zhirong Technology comes from its keen sense of market smell and advanced product layout on the one hand, and on the other hand, its rare and rich experience in the design of digital-analog hybrid ICs.

Li Xin, founder and CEO of Zhirong Technology, mentioned that the advantage of Zhirong is that most of the team has mainly attacked the SOC main control chip system platform, with a systematic background and thinking. In addition, there are core R & D personnel of international analog giants, so they can span the digital and analog fields, be good at the design and integration of digital-analog hybrid, achieve comprehensive solutions, reduce customer development costs, and help customers quickly mass production, which is difficult to do in general general material simulation companies.

Long-line layout

After the fast charging market attack, Zhirong Technology has ambitions to go high and continue to move towards new goals.

In the short term, fast charging is still the "main business" of Zhirong Technology. For the overall market trend, Li Xin is optimistic that the fast charging market will continue to be a fast-growing market in the next 3 to 5 years, which can quickly pull the revenue performance of Zhirong Technology to continue to rise.

The focus of the long-term future, Li Xin said, Zhirong Technology will focus on two aspects: on the one hand, it will continue to deepen the main business, focus on fast charging, do a full range of product lines such as wired fast charging, wireless fast charging, multi-cell fast charging management, etc., and develop ACDC/synchronous rectifier chips to form end-to-end complete solutions, so that customers can launch products and realize value faster; on the other hand, continue to expand emerging fields, including BMS battery management, smart industry, etc., and comprehensively lay out Power + MCU. SOC power management solutions for PMIC and integrated MCUs are available. The gradual transition from the consumer electronics market to the industrial electronics and even more high-end automotive electronics market.

But realistically speaking, the threshold for vehicle-grade chips is very high. Li Xin said that entering the automotive field has extremely high requirements for the company's quality control system, products need to go through a long testing and certification cycle, Zhirong Technology has also made a 3-5 years of medium and long-term planning, continue to cultivate internal strength, and prepare for the future to continue to build a "second curve" growth.

While the product line continues to expand and extend, Li Xin also judged that the integration and intelligence of analog ICs in the future will become a major trend, and only by constantly moving forward can it be possible to maintain a leading position. The integration involves both high voltage and a large amount of digital logic, which requires innovative integration in order to be more dominant than discrete solutions in terms of performance and cost, only in this way can it be accepted and recognized by customers with high integration, low power consumption and small size.

For the serious capacity shortage of analog chips in the past two years, Li Xin also said with some feeling that in the case of global production capacity shortage this year, although efforts have been made to achieve performance growth, there is still a gap in customer demand. How to solve the problem of production capacity in the future, on the one hand, Zhirong Technology has maintained a supply chain system for many years and continues to maintain a deep trust partnership with upstream manufacturers; on the other hand, Zhirong Technology will also open up some new foundry and packaging and testing suppliers to achieve multiple production capacity supply. Li Xin also analyzed that the phenomenon of stock shortage is also a process of "big wave sand" for domestic manufacturers, and those who survive are enterprises that meet the real needs of customers and have long-term business plans.

Undoubtedly, Zhirong Technology has created its own new world in the simulation market. However, from the perspective of the global market, the domestic analog market is still mostly controlled by giants such as TI and ADI, and the domestic analog chip companies have not started soon, and the giants of adult size have not yet appeared, and the analog chip market still needs long-term layout while promising.

Li Xin believes that the analog chip is more than the long-distance runner of the entire technology cycle, it does not chase Moore's Law, in addition to the size, power consumption, cost of the key targets of the product, but also need to be in the high signal-to-noise ratio, low distortion, high reliability and stability and other parameters to achieve a balance, than the experience, than the product richness.

"Analog chips are a long-term business that requires continuous hard work to make it possible to become bigger and stronger." Li Xin said pertinently.

In addition, under the great power game, domestic substitution will become a medium- and long-term sustainable development direction, and there will be a relatively long window of opportunity. Li Xin mentioned that at present, this industry is a hundred flowers blooming, and many small and beautiful companies are growing in every market segment, but in the next 3 to 5 years, the head enterprises in every field and every direction will initially take shape and will enter the second half of mergers and acquisitions. Only by merging streams into lakes and then merging into oceans can we compete with foreign giants.

According to WSTS, the global analog chip market size was $55.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow by 31% to $72.8 billion in 2021. China is the largest market for analog chips, accounting for 36% of the world in 2020, but the self-sufficiency rate is only about 12%. With the increase in demand for domestic substitution, with the support of policies, capital and customers, China's simulated enterprises will enter a golden period of development. Based on "wisdom, innovation and integration", Zhirong Technology has a clear strategy, a steady playing style, full of determination, and steadily advancing towards a lofty goal, and the future can be expected.