Author 丨 Luo Yiqi
Editor 丨 Zhang Weixian
Figure Source 丨 Figure Worm
More and more mobile phone industry chain manufacturers are seeking opportunities to rush to the automotive supply chain system, and this trend is becoming more and more urgent in the context of the lack of significant signs of rebound in the smartphone market.
Recently, including electronic component manufacturers and ODM foundries, etc., once again intensively opened the investment in the automotive electronics industry, after a round of mobile phone industry chain manufacturers competed to announce plans to enter automotive electronics, or around 2019. However, unlike the accumulation of many years in the mobile phone market, supply chain manufacturers need to go through new product run-in, technical verification and other processes when facing the new automobile market, which is also accompanied by the acquisition and integration of related industry companies.
This means that in the process of entering the automotive supply chain, mobile phone industry chain manufacturers will experience multiple tests such as technical ability transformation and management ability and time precipitation, at the same time, the global core deficiency environment that has not yet been significantly alleviated is also bringing certain stage challenges to the path exploration of supply chain manufacturers to some extent - at least in this context, the automotive market can not quickly bring more obvious performance improvement.
Of course, this trend is certain and irreversible.
Some companies that entered the automotive industry chain earlier have differentiated their performance in the context of the continuous decline in the revenue of mobile phone-related business. Moreover, within the mobile phone manufacturers, the mobile phone industry will still face upward pressure this year.
The mobile phone business is under upward pressure
Figure / Figure worm
Judging from the performance disclosed by the current mobile phone supply chain companies, the sales support from the Android camp mobile phone manufacturers is weak, which affects their performance to a certain extent.
According to the financial data previously released by Daliguang, the leader in the optical field, the company's revenue and net profit in the fourth quarter of 2021 are still declining, although the company is actively promoting the introduction of high-end lens products for mobile phones, but the industry's demand for high-end lenses remains cautious.
The data recently disclosed by Sunny Optics also shows that in January 2022, in the company's optical parts shipments, mobile phone lenses fell by 11% year-on-year, car lenses rose by 2.5% year-on-year, and 55.3% month-on-month.
Fang Jing, chief analyst of Minsheng Electronics, pointed out that due to the interference of external factors such as lack of cores in the early stage, the company's vehicle lens shipments in 2021 have been maintained at a level of about 5 million for several months, and the company's single-month vehicle lens shipments in January were 7.527 million, a new high. Of course, to a certain extent, this degree benefits from factors such as pulling goods on the eve of the Spring Festival, but from the perspective of industry information including Companies such as Shunyu, medium- and long-term semiconductors will still maintain structural tensions, and the prosperity of automotive electronics and AR/VR meta-universes will continue to improve.
"We think the past decade has been the golden decade for mobile phones, and the next decade will be the golden decade for automotive electronics + semiconductors."
The downturn in the mobile phone industry has lasted for a long time, but in this market that has entered a mature period of development, it is already difficult to hope that it will usher in a particularly large new demand.
"In recent years, the demand for active replacement in the mobile phone industry has been shrinking after the market saturation." A component manufacturer insider analyzed to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, of course, this does not mean complete pessimism. On the contrary, from the perspective of the general 2-3 year life cycle of mobile phone products, the bottleneck period that appeared around 2018-2019 has also experienced the same time cycle so far, so there will still be passive replacement demand.
"The chances of the mobile phone industry continuing to languish for many years are unlikely, after all, smartphones will still need to be replaced after 2-3 years." In addition, we are also looking forward to the emergence of new ways of playing or new scenes, and the promotion of the demand for active replacement, such as new applications brought by Apple. The person continued that under such an industrial development logic, then for component manufacturers, in addition to complying with the fluctuations of the industry cycle, it is necessary to do a good job in the deployment of new businesses, including automotive electronics.
Not only the consideration of diversified business complementarity, smart cars will also bring greater support for demand and profits to the supply chain.
Taking optical lenses as an example, the number of lenses required for mobile phones is generally about three at present, but the number of smart cars needed will be 10 or even more on average, and in view of the improvement of the car's requirements for safety and so on, it will also bring about a price increase, which is undoubtedly a greater performance growth expectation.
Space is sought but still needs to be accumulated
The accelerated landing of smart cars is already a visible fact, even if it is only from the road from the "new car-making forces" and the increasing number of Teslas is a proof.
There are constantly new entrants involved. In August 2021, Daliguang announced the establishment of a new company, Dagen Industrial, which will invest NT$1 billion to provide two major customers with vehicle-related products, including various types of vehicle lenses such as front view, surround view and rear view. Not long ago, ODM foundry Huaqin Technology also landed in Shanghai automotive electronics R & D headquarters and intelligent manufacturing base, with a total investment of 3.7 billion yuan.
For manufacturers who laid out the automotive electronics business relatively early, under the background of pressure on the smartphone-related business, the automotive business has indeed been able to bring certain improvements to performance.
The aforementioned Shunyu Optics is a case, and OFILM, which previously laid out its automotive electronics business, also had a similar performance. According to the semi-annual report of fiscal 2021, under the background of simultaneous adjustment from the apple and Android camp major customers, of THEILM's three major businesses, only the intelligent car business achieved a relatively high growth of 78.22%, of which ADAS revenue of 120 million yuan, an increase of 777.68% year-on-year, gross profit margin is also the highest performance of many businesses; the other main optical optoelectronic products and microelectronic products have declined to varying degrees. However, compared with the overall revenue of 11.742 billion yuan in the OFILM period, the business contribution of automotive electronics is only the beginning.
Moving from a fast-paced phone to a relatively slow-paced, long-cycle car is not something that happens overnight. After all, even if it has reached cooperation with the "new car-making forces", Shunyu's shipments from one million on-board lenses at this stage are still far from the shipments of 131.5 million mobile phone lenses, but this is a rough statistic that does not measure factors such as sales unit price. Although OFILM's automotive electronics business is growing rapidly, it is also because of its low base, and the performance pull effect that can be brought to the group is not obvious.
According to the financial report, OFILM began to fully lay out the field of intelligent cars and vehicle networking in 2015, and in 2018, through the acquisition of Fuji Tianjin, it mastered a total of 1040 patents related to mobile phones and automotive lenses.
Huaqin Technology entered the field of automotive electronics in 2018, and established the automotive electronics division in 2021 to fully open the relevant layout.
A supply chain manufacturer insider told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that compared with the product introduction cycle that only half a year in the mobile phone industry, the product import cycle of the automobile is generally 2-3 years, and the middle involves the need to pass the car regulation certification and other links. This has led to investment in the automotive industry, which often takes longer than mobile phones to wait for the fruit to bear fruit.
The overall lack of core in the industry is a test that has to be faced. Compared with the 5nm-7nm and other processes currently required by the high-end flagship of the mobile phone, the mainstream process of the vehicle-grade chip is about 28nm, which is still plaguing the semiconductor supply chain to a certain extent. "Of course, we believe that the lack of core problems will be solved sooner or later in the next 1-2 years, and it is precisely the development cycle of cars that is longer, whether it is its own certification time, or from oil vehicles to electric vehicles to intelligent technological change process, it needs to be done step by step, and now is the right time." The person continued.
This issue is edited by Liu Xiang Intern Zhan Huinan