In 2018, Ms. Gree Dong Mingzhu announced the launch of the core manufacturing plan, due to the high cost of core manufacturing, the industry is not optimistic; in 2019, after the Huawei chip supply cut and the chip card neck incident occurred, everyone really realized the importance of the chip. Subsequently, home appliance companies including Konka, Changhong, Hisense and Midea entered the chip track.
Recently, Midea announced that its self-developed MCU control chips have been mass-produced more than 10 million. According to the data, Midea entered the chip field in the second half of 2018, and began mass production in 2021, mainly producing MCU control chips, and the output has exceeded 10 million. In the face of the dilemma of lack of cores, the head home appliance companies have successively entered the core-making camp, will there be a drama?
Is core manufacturing the way out for China's home appliance companies?
Under the trend of increasing diversification and fragmentation of user consumption demand, the domestic "core shortage" has not yet been solved, and "cross-border core manufacturing" has become an industry trend.
The image comes from a screenshot on Weibo
In recent years, semiconductor fever, in addition to the industry's manufacturers, automobiles, mobile phones, home appliance manufacturers, and even real estate, department stores and other enterprises have been plunged into the core track one after another. Some cross-border chip fields in various industries may be following the trend, but for home appliance companies, core manufacturing is imminent, and it is also the pain of "lack of core and soul".
At present, from Gree, Hisense, Konka to Midea, home appliance giants are walking on the road to making cores, of which the MCU control chips developed by Midea have been mass-produced more than 10 million. Midea Group said on the interactive platform that in the second half of 2018, Midea entered the chip field and began mass production in 2021, mainly putting into production the type of chip for MCU control chips, with an annual output of about 10 million. In the future, the company will continue to increase chip production and enter other home appliance-related chip products such as power and power supply.
In addition to Midea, Hisense is also actively building cores, and it has accumulated more than 20 years in chip research and development. In June 2005, Hisense developed China's first digital video processing chip with independent intellectual property rights and industrialization; since 2015, Hisense has released five picture quality chips; in January 2022, Hisense released China's first 8K AI picture quality chip. For home appliances, the core is the chip. The specifications of the chip and the performance of the chip will affect the competitiveness of the terminal home appliance products in the market, and determine the profit and operating efficiency of the home appliance enterprise.
TCL's coremaking target is a chip design project, and there are already 2 projects. TCL has said that one of the chip companies has been listed, and there will be other companies listed in the future; in 2017, Gree announced the establishment of a microelectronics department, planning to create its own chips, in January 2022, Gree said on the interactive platform that the company's larger amount of microcontroller chips and power device chips have been independently developed and used, and a large number of them have been put into use, and some chips have been developed to the second generation. Gree said that the company's research in the field of semiconductors has made significant progress, and self-developed chips and devices have been verified by mass production.
Chip is known as the country's "industrial grain", is the heart of the whole machine equipment, chip technology is the technical level of the whole machine mark, reflects the core intellectual property rights and the main added value of the product. For example, in the field of color TV, Chinese, Japanese and Korean companies have launched a fierce competition around display technology and industrial chain, and brands such as Changhong, Hisense and TCL have continuously refreshed the ceiling of China's display quality through self-developed chips.
The author believes that the chip, like the key components such as compressors and motors, will become one of the core components of home appliances and the direction of future innovation and development. Core manufacturing is regarded as the way out for home appliance companies to solve the problem of card neck, but not everyone has the ability to make cores. Even if the funds are sufficient, but there are no rich resources and innovative technologies, it is still a difficult road to go on, which requires continuous trial and error, and the cost increases accordingly. Compared with experienced chip design companies, home appliance companies are difficult to achieve the same height in a short period of time, so many home appliance companies choose to cooperate with chip manufacturers or participate in the way of core manufacturing. For home appliance companies, only when manufacturing moves to high-quality development, the industry leaps to the middle and high-end, and from the price dispute to the value struggle, will they gain vitality and future.
Home appliance companies make cores, and the direction has its own focus
General home appliance chips include MCU master control chips, power management chips, connection chips, driver chips and image processing chips, taking the MCU master control chips and image processing chips as an example, they are like the brains of home appliances, which can direct and coordinate the functions of the TV.
Due to the different positioning and application of home appliance companies, the direction and focus of each brand are also different. Integrated circuits are distinguished according to the dimensions of functional structure, production process, application field and use, and can be divided into many different types. From the perspective of the industrial chain, most of the semiconductor businesses currently laid out by Gree and Konka are related to IC design and packaging processes.
TCL Semiconductor will be used as the company's semiconductor business platform to invest in industrial development opportunities in the fields of integrated circuit chip design and semiconductor power devices; Hisense semiconductor chip plan, engaged in the research and development of smart TV SoC chips and AI (artificial intelligence) chips; Midea has been involved in the semiconductor field through the establishment of semiconductor companies, investment in chip companies, etc., and has achieved good results, especially in the intelligent power module (IPM), Midea has been low-key cultivation for many years. It can be seen from the information released by domestic home appliance giants that the semiconductor business areas they will expand in the future are not the same, and each has its own focus.
Gree Electric Appliances has long been doing IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor, is a semiconductor power device, air conditioning AC frequency conversion and other technologies need this component to do support) packaging, for the main chip of the air conditioner in the unit has also been able to design, for the part that can not be designed to take the form of outsourcing processing. At present, the chips of Gree Electric Appliances are mainly designed to meet the purpose of self-use.
Konka has said that storage and Internet of Things chips are the two major directions of Konka's semiconductor business in the future. Konka terminal sales are large, the market will be larger and larger in the future, and the storage business is worth investing. In the future, the Internet of Things chip technology will bring new development opportunities to the home appliance industry, and it is of great significance to make a key layout in the chip field in both practical and strategic senses.
With the development of the Internet of Things, intelligent hardware, smart home, automotive electronics and other industries are the future will break out of the market, home appliance companies in the supply of their own product lines at the same time, if you can meet the needs of other industries, it is a good way to quickly profit. In the author's view, in today's chip shortage, home appliance companies layout semiconductor chips and can develop their own chips, which is not only conducive to the development of enterprises, to a certain extent, can alleviate the domestic "chip panic", but also can improve or solve the hidden dangers of home appliance chip card neck.
High-end chips are still the shortcomings of home appliances, how to break through?
With the upgrading of frequency conversion and intelligent technology, the home appliance chip market is expected to continue to grow, which is a short board that is urgently needed to be made up for in China. The penetration rate of inverter home appliances has increased, driving the high growth of IPM power chips and MCU intelligent control chips. At present, the mainland is mainly in the high-end chip gap is larger, but in the low-end chip domestic substitution rate is high, such as Gree, Midea, Konka, Hisense, Changhong and other mainstream home appliance companies have been in the chip field for many years, in some links to achieve self-production and self-sufficiency.
From the industry's point of view, the stable and healthy development of the home appliance market must first ensure the safety and reliability of the home appliance supply chain. Affected by the epidemic last year, the MCU market price increase, shortage of goods, and the phenomenon of extended delivery time were very serious, and home appliance companies open source drainage introduced new MCU suppliers. However, as a key part of electronic materials, MCU suppliers' supply capacity and product strength must be carefully examined.
In the past two years, a number of domestic home appliance companies have successively announced the results of chip research and development. Some home appliance companies have gradually entered the mass production stage in the chip field, and major home appliance companies are accelerating their layout, thereby promoting the marketization process. Industry analysis, home appliance industry core manufacturing is an inevitable trend, home appliance companies can grasp the opportunity in the future wave of home appliance intelligence, the key lies in the chip. Whether it is Gree or Midea, if there is a breakthrough in core manufacturing, it will play a vital role in enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises in the country and even the world.
The chip development difficulty used in high-end home appliances is not high, but the development of high-end chips is very complicated and difficult, so domestic home appliance companies are easy to be stuck neck by competitors on high-end chips, from the perspective of supply chain security, home appliance companies to develop high-end chips is very worth doing.
The image comes from a screenshot of an e-commerce product
In the author's opinion, the shortage of home appliance chips is only temporary. With the continuous investment of the state and society in the semiconductor industry, the phenomenon of home appliance chip shortage will gradually ease later, but as a production-oriented home appliance enterprise, it is also necessary to do a good job of inventory preparation and reduce the impact of external chip shortage on home appliance production.
The mainland integrated circuit market is huge, the required chips rely heavily on imports, in the case of the chip industry is still lagging behind, not only need to rely on market forces, but also need the state to focus on the core and weak links of the industry in terms of financial support and policy guidance. For home appliance companies, through self-developed chips, they can promote the interconnection of smart home appliances and create more value for the home appliance industry based on big data. Although the road to localization of chips is long, there is still a certain gap with the international level, but home appliances, technology and other enterprises to enter the field of semiconductor chips and achieve certain results is a good start, which means that the mainland manufacturing industry will no longer be subject to people in the future.
Write at the end
From the current point of view, China's home appliance companies have achieved initial results in self-developed chips, which has greatly improved the situation of being subject to people before and breaking the monopoly of chip companies. Hisense, Haier, TCL, Midea, Skyworth and other home appliance companies have actively entered the game to contribute their own strength to the mainland's core manufacturing cause, and will also drive chip prices to gradually decline, thereby accelerating the cost control of their own products.
It is believed that with the blessing of many home appliance companies and technology companies, the mainland will change the situation of "card neck" in the chip field as soon as possible, and truly change from "Made in China" to "Created in China".