Source of this article: Time Weekly Author: Yang Lingling
The matter of "making cores" is serious about Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.
In 2021, China's four major mobile phone manufacturers "Huami OV" gathered in the chip self-development track. Among them, Xiaomi launched two chips, namely the ISP chip Surging C1 released in March, the charging chip Surging P1 released in December; Vivo announced the first self-developed ISP chip V1; OPPO released the first self-developed image dedicated NPU chip; Huawei HiSilicon also launched a new generation of image processing engine Yueying ISP chip.
Each manufacturer accelerates the core manufacturing, has its own considerations: the external procurement of chips saves money, worry, but in the face of homogenization problems, after the industry enters the Red Sea market, only differentiation can form core competitiveness, and the procurement of chips is subject to suppliers, once the lack of cores, it is likely to mean death.
At present, the "Meter OV" unanimously points its power to the ISP (Image Signal Processing) chip, not the most core SoC (System on Chip), mainly for technical and financial considerations.
However, there are already successful cases to learn from on the road of core making: Apple, Samsung, and Huawei have become guests in the high-end market through their self-developed A-series chips, Exynos series chips and Kirin chips.
It can be said that whether it is to deal with the current anxious market competition, or to prepare for the impact of the high-end market, chips have become a must for head mobile phone manufacturers. Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are eager to create their own Qualcomm, MediaTek, then, mobile phones have the opportunity to become the first to achieve chip domestic substitution of the industry?
"Core building" to cope with market competition
Although Chinese mobile phone brands occupy an important position in the global market, how to continue to go down is a problem worth thinking about.
Recently, data released by market research agency Counterpoint Research shows that since the start of Apple's iPhone 13 series, it has ranked first in the Sales Volume of the Chinese Market for 6 consecutive weeks, and the gap between Chinese manufacturers vivo and OPPO has continued to widen and has been in the leading position.
For Chinese manufacturers, whether it is Xiaomi, which boasts of benchmarking Apple, OPPO, which recalls sub-brands and combs the product line, vivo that develops steadily, or the glory of re-emerging mobile phones in a new identity, it has not achieved results in the high-end market, and it is still Apple's monopoly.
"In the market where the price is more than 6,000 yuan, who has a little more and less shares in the short term is not the key." The key is who can have the ability to fight against the top players in the future for a period of time, which is also the pursuit of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers in the future. Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Vivo, previously said in an interview with the Times Weekly reporter.
Domestic mobile phone manufacturers try to break the situation, taking the flagship machine launched in 2021 as an example, vivo X70 series is priced at 3699 yuan, OPPO Find X3 series is priced from 4499 yuan, Glory Magic3 series is priced from 4599 yuan, and Xiaomi also launches a Xiaomi 11 Pro with a starting price of 4999 yuan.
At the same time, various mobile phone manufacturers have come up with their own killer skills - folding screens to push up product prices. Among them, the prices of OPPO Find N, Honor Magic V, Huawei P50 Pocket and Xiaomi MIX FOLD came to 7699~ 8999 yuan, 9999 ~ 10999 yuan, 8988 ~ 10988 yuan, 9999 ~ 12999 yuan, respectively.
The development of the high-end market is not a short-term effort, and chips are one of the constraints. For a long time, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have been limited by the chip supply of Qualcomm and MediaTek, and must adjust new mobile phone products according to external chips, and the chip production capacity is insufficient, and they will face the problem of delayed or even out-of-stock mobile phone release.
Correspondingly, Apple's A-series chips, Samsung's Exynos series chips and Huawei's Kirin chips have become the trump cards for enterprises to attack high-end.
In the face of this reality, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have responded with chips self-research, and the first choice is ISP chips. According to reports, in order to form a self-developed chip team, many mobile phone manufacturers have arranged the interview location for recruitment next to the offices of chip companies such as MediaTek and ZhanRui. Previously, a domestic mobile phone manufacturer offered an annual salary of 1.8 million yuan for the isp chip director.
When will soC chips be self-developed?
Starting from small chips does not mean that mobile phone manufacturers have given up the research and development of SoC chips, and with the acceleration of self-development, mobile phone SoCs may become a breakthrough in domestic alternatives to chips.
The SoC of smart phones is quite complex, including CPU, GPU, Modem, ISP, Memory, etc., to achieve communication transmission, high-speed computing, image processing and many other functions, and it is extremely difficult to design a mobile phone SoC with PPA (performance, power consumption, area) balance. To achieve self-developed chips from dedicated to universal, from available to easy to use, domestic mobile phone manufacturers still have a long way to go.
According to the wisdom bud global patent database, comparing the patent reserves of Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo in chip-related fields, the five companies have a rich patent layout.
In terms of quantity, huawei, millet, OPPO, vivo four domestic mobile phone manufacturers in the mobile phone chip related field of more than 4300, more than 750 pieces, 1800 pieces, more than 730 pieces, of which more than 1600 authorized invention patents, more than 320 pieces, more than 430 pieces and more than 140 pieces, respectively.
In the focus of mobile phone chips, Huawei mainly focuses on processors, memory, communication technology, and baseband chips, Xiaomi focuses on displays, power management chips, wireless charging, fingerprint recognition, etc., OPPO focuses on fingerprint chips, displays, cameras, and driver chips, and Vivo has a layout in the fields of photosensitive chips, camera modules, communication technologies, and fingerprint chips.
Hu Baishan told the Times Weekly reporter that the chip layout direction is related to the company's future long track, and it is not excluded that the chip layout in other tracks is not ruled out.
OPPO CEO Chen Mingyong said that Mariana X is only the starting point of OPPO chip self-research. For the difficulties and challenges of this road, he and OPPO's self-research team of thousands of people have full awareness.
Dr. Zuo Kunlong, isp architect of Xiaomi's mobile phone department who led the development of the surging chip, also said that Xiaomi chose to start again with the ISP chip as the starting point, and the follow-up will return to the design of the mobile phone heart device SoC chip.
It is foreseeable that although Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo are currently focusing on the research and development of ISP chips, the ultimate goal will be SoC chips. In 2022, the three major brands will continue to increase investment in SoC chips, but there are still variables when they can fully realize the self-development of SoC chips.