At the Xiaomi Mi 12 series conference on December 28, 2021, Xiaomi Chairman Lei Jun proposed two "small goals" that aroused heated discussion. One is that Xiaomi mobile phones have achieved the world's first sales within three years, and the other is to officially benchmark Apple. In the second quarter of 2021, Xiaomi's sales surpassed Apple to the second position in the world, and Lei Jun proposed not only to surpass Apple in sales, but also to gradually catch up with Apple in terms of products and experience.
The core of Apple's product experience is the perfect closed loop composed of self-developed SoCs and self-developed OS. Xiaomi's ambition for self-developed SoC has been precipitated for four years, and it has repulsed with the self-developed image chip surging C1 and the self-developed charging chip surging P1 released in 2021. From four years of coreless to two cores a year, Xiaomi's core-making ambitions continue to ferment.
From radical to pragmatic
SoC is the most core and cutting-edge chip of mobile phones, and it is also the core device with the highest threshold for mobile phone self-development. At present, only four mobile phone manufacturers in the world have launched self-developed SoC chips. Xiaomi is the latest member of the "SoC Self-Development Club" and the one with the most difficult progress.
In 2017, Xiaomi launched the first self-developed SoC chip surging S1, installed in the Xiaomi Mi 5C, which can be described as a blockbuster.
However, from the perspective of product positioning and profit returns, the self-developed surging S1 may not be a cost-effective choice for Xiaomi at that time. Due to the extremely high cost of mobile phone SoC research and development and manufacturing, Apple, Huawei, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers will give priority to self-developed SoCs in high-end flagships, and use high-profit models for self-developed "blood return". The surging S1 is only equipped with the mid-range mobile phone of Xiaomi 5C, and has not been reused in other models. Although the follow-up product surging S2 has repeatedly reported the news of the tape, but so far no finished product has come out, which has cast a shadow of uncertainty on the prospect of Xiaomi's self-developed SoC.
Although the surging S2 has not appeared for a long time, Xiaomi has not been idle in the matter of core making in recent years.
The first thing that can be seen is Xiaomi's continuous investment in semiconductor companies. In the same year that the surging S1 was released, Xiaomi and Hubei Yangtze River Economic Belt Industry Guidance Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) jointly initiated the establishment of the Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund to support the business expansion of Xiaomi and Xiaomi ecological chain enterprises. Since then, the fund has made a series of investment moves in semiconductor companies. In 2021 alone, xiaomi yangtze river industry fund has invested in more than 12 semiconductor companies, involving AI chips, communication chips, automotive chips, mobile phone SoCs, FPGAs, MEMS, MLCC, digital-to-analog conversion chips, power devices, discrete devices and other fields.
Note: The semiconductor companies mainly invested by Hubei Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund Partnership in 2021 are sorted out and checked by enterprises
In December 2021, Xiaomi also established Shanghai Xuanjing Technology Co., Ltd., which focuses on electronic information technology, with a registered capital of 1.5 billion yuan, and the legal representative is Zeng Xuezhong, president of Xiaomi's mobile phone department, and its business scope includes integrated circuit chip design and service, integrated circuit chip and product sales, and integrated circuit design.
In terms of core-making strategy, Xiaomi has moved from SoC to dedicated chips, from mid-range models to high-end models.
On March 30, 2021, Xiaomi released the self-developed image signal processing chip Surging C1 as an independent ISP to improve the autofocus, white balance and auto exposure performance of the phone. The chip is equipped with the MIX FOLD, a folding screen phone priced at 9999 yuan by Xiaomi.
On December 24 of the same year, Xiaomi released the self-developed fast charging chip surging P1. The chip is the industry's first resonant charging chip, which has been developed for 18 months and cost more than 100 million. Relying on the Xiaomi Surging P1's surging second charging scheme, the battery of 4600mAh can be fully charged in the fastest 18 minutes in the speed mode. On December 28 of the same year, the surging P1 was launched on the high-end flagship mi 12pro.
Why did Xiaomi move from SoCs to dedicated chips? On the one hand, due to the increasing functions of smart phones, the requirements for computing power and power consumption are becoming more and more stringent, and the research and development difficulty and R&D investment of mobile phone SoC are not the same as when the surging S1 was launched. On the other hand, it can also be seen that Xiaomi core has changed from radical to pragmatic.
"At present, the mobile phone market has entered the era of stock growth, and launching a second SoC before there is no definite core competitiveness and predictable market returns will only make R&D and profitability completely out of proportion." In contrast, the supporting chips of the differences in the subdivision of the surging C1 and the surging P1 may be the key to the future brilliance of the millet chip research and development department, and it is also the core competitive element of millet to shape the high-end image of the brand, and it is more in line with the current use needs of millet mobile phone products. This is a fairly pragmatic strategic transformation. Zhong Xinlong, senior consultant of the Institute of Informatization and Software Industry of CCID think tank, told the Reporter of China Electronics News.
Being able to use it well is key
At the Xiaomi Mi 12 series conference, Lei Jun proposed two small goals. First, xiaomi mobile phone sales have peaked at the top of the world in three years. The second is to officially benchmark Apple.
"We decided to take a clear stand in terms of products and experiences, officially put forward benchmarking Apple, learn from Apple, and must surpass Apple step by step in the next period of time." Lei Jun said.
As we all know, the integrity of Apple's product experience is based on self-developed SoCs and self-developed operating systems. In the 2021 CCTV documentary, Xiaomi also made it clear that it will return to the design and manufacture of mobile phone SoCs. At the Xiaomi 12 conference, Lei Jun said that technology is the iron law of Xiaomi, and in the past two years, Xiaomi has a team of more than 16,000 engineers and invested 22 billion. In the next 5 years, Xiaomi's R& D investment will increase to 100 billion yuan.
Can the R&D expenditure of 100 billion yuan support the research and development of a mobile phone SoC? In this regard, industry analysts told reporters that at the moment when there is an Arm public architecture and a third-party IP core that can be purchased, as long as there is a research and development team, the investment of 100 billion yuan is enough to launch a SoC. But to develop a SoC that can be used well and can match the same high-end flagship machine, I am afraid it is far from enough. And once the investment in SoC begins, it needs to invest more money in the long run to create a solid technical foundation and optimize the iterative technical system.
More important than R&D funds is how Xiaomi combines the technology and achievements of its self-developed SoC with its various product lines to maximize its technical value and strive for market returns.
"Apple only uses its own SoC for mobile phones, but the shipment of mobile phones is enough to support profits. Huawei's previous mobile phone shipments were not as much as Apple's, but its terminals have many types, and its self-developed SoC is helpful to all product lines. Xiaomi needs to comprehensively evaluate the help of self-developed SoCs for various businesses to decide on R&D strategies. Sheng Linghai, vice president of research at Gartner, told reporters.
With mobile phones as the starting point and core, Xiaomi is actively expanding its business territory. In 2019, Xiaomi officially launched the "mobile phone + AIoT" dual-engine strategy. In March 2021, Xiaomi officially announced its entry into the smart electric vehicle industry. The self-developed mobile phone SoC is expected to benefit all of Xiaomi's product lines.
"Many of the R&D achievements and supply channels of mobile phone SoCs can be seamlessly connected to intelligent networked vehicles. At the same time, the Internet of Everything smart device system with smart phones as the key, including smart wearable devices, smart homes, smart security, etc., can reuse the research and development results of the chip design team. Zhong Xinlong said.