Text/Di Lin Review/Zi Yang Proofreader/Zhi Qiu
In the second half of 2020, Huawei was affected by layers of bans, and the smartphone business was greatly impacted. In the past, it was possible to catch up with Apple and directly approach Samsung Electronics in the global market, but now it is classified as "Others".
The global mobile phone chip market is shuffled
It is worth mentioning that because of the restrictions of the ban, Huawei is not only affected by the smartphone business, but also the chip business that is in the ascending stage.
According to the latest research report released by counterpoint, a well-known market research organization, global smartphone AP/SoC chipset shipments achieved a 5% year-on-year increase in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Detailed data in the list shows that in the same period of 2020, Huawei HiSilicon's market share reached 7% comparable to Samsung Electronics, and now Huawei HiSilicon's chip shipments account for only 1%.
As far as the current situation is concerned, Huawei HiSilicon is likely to be as unnamed as Huawei smartphones and become "Others".
According to huawei HiSilicon's previous growth trend, it was expected to surpass Samsung Electronics to become the fourth in the world. However, the ban has caused Huawei to lose the production capacity support of wafer foundries such as TSMC and SMIC, and HiSilicon chips cannot be mass-produced.
Although Huawei still has excellent chip design capabilities, it is powerless to do anything about chip manufacturing. Huawei HiSilicon can only step back and give the market to competitors.
Looking at the listed companies in the entire list, there are not a few chip suppliers who enjoy the "Huawei dividend", such as the most obvious Unigroup Zhanrui.
The domestic chip company's market share in the fourth quarter of 2020 was only 4%, but it grew sharply to 11% in the fourth quarter of 2021, surpassing Samsung to rank fourth in the world.
Qualcomm also achieved substantial year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2021, with a market share of 30% to take the second place in the world.
Of course, the growth of Qualcomm's share is not only because of the enjoyment of the "Huawei dividend", the author believes that it is also due to the multiple chips released by Qualcomm in order to seize the market.
For example, the strongest performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 so far, the strong performance of the chip has attracted a large number of supporters, honor, millet, OV and other domestic mobile phone giants have been in the first time after the release of the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 for its platform.
But unfortunately, even though Qualcomm had an excellent performance in the fourth quarter of 2021, it still failed to regain the position of the world's largest mobile phone chip supplier from MediaTek.
MediaTek pressed Qualcomm to the top of the list
According to the rankings, MediaTek's chipset shipments accounted for 33% during the reporting period, leading Qualcomm by 3%.
Moreover, this is also a regression of MediaTek, and in the fourth quarter of 2020, the company's market share was as high as 37%.
As we all know, before Huawei was blocked, mediatek's popularity has not been high, and domestic mobile phone manufacturers will hardly apply MediaTek processors to high-end models.
However, after the ban blocked Huawei, more and more models equipped with MediaTek processors on the market began to increase, which is why MediaTek was able to stabilize Qualcomm in the global market and occupy the world's first throne.
As for the reason why MediaTek can rank first in the market, the author believes that there are two main aspects. On the one hand, MediaTek has also enjoyed the "Huawei dividend".
It should be noted that MediaTek has not only obtained a lot of markets that Huawei has been forced to give up, but also obtained additional support from domestic mobile phone manufacturers.
After all, Huawei's sanctions have sounded an alarm for the entire domestic mobile phone industry, in order to reduce the dependence on Qualcomm processors, Xiaomi OV can only choose MediaTek to balance Qualcomm.
As for the other hand, it is naturally thanks to MediaTek's optimization of its product structure and the upgrading of chip performance.
Compared with the previous MediaTek processor, the Tianji series can be described as both performance and price, and the comprehensive strength can be completely comparable to qualcomm Snapdragon's same-segment chip.
In addition, in order to better achieve the counterattack, MediaTek also formed a Series of Tianji product system to besiege the Snapdragon mid-range chip.
In 2021, MediaTek launched the Tianji 9000 to once again impact the high-end market after repeated defeats.
Moreover, MediaTek has also caught up in the chip process, and if it can maintain the current growth rate, it is expected to catch up with Qualcomm Snapdragon.
Write at the end
However, it is not easy to completely surpass Qualcomm, after all, MediaTek has not yet established a foothold in the high-end market, and in terms of market share, the gap between MediaTek and Qualcomm is not large, only 3% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
The gap of more than 10% in the same period of 2020 is a special situation after all, and there is no second "Huawei" in the list that is forced to give up the market, which will hardly occur in the future.
Therefore, MediaTek's position as the world's largest mobile phone chip supplier is not sitting steadily, and Qualcomm is also trying to regain the world's first position.
MediaTek's slight slack will be overtaken, so in my opinion, it is too early to make up our minds to determine the ownership of the throne, what do you think?