We all know that the current mobile phone market for technology competition is very fierce, a lot of big brands, such as Apple Huawei millet, OPPO, vivo, etc., they in order to be able to compete for better market share, constantly innovate, launch their own high-end machine, then as far as our domestic mobile phone market is concerned, although we have a lot of mobile phone brands, but can be comparable to the United States Apple mobile phone, in fact, there are not many. Before we had Huawei's high-end machine, but then with Huawei being suppressed by the United States, then almost none of our domestic companies can compete with Apple in the high-end machine market, which also makes Apple make a lot of money in the mainland market.
Recall that before we were in the high-end mobile phone market, Huawei company with its independent research and development of HiSilicon Kirin processor chip, successfully created a p series and mate series of high-end flagship mobile phones, once comparable to Apple mobile phones, but then with Huawei was suppressed, then Huawei HiSilicon Kirin chips in the sale of its inventory almost became a song, and Huawei mobile phone sales have also declined after, and now Huawei mobile phone business has been divided into other ranks, So at this time Apple is slowly expanding its market share, we see that the latest iPhone in our Chinese market is also selling well, in addition, I want to say that Apple, he also obtained a company in Jiangsu 50 tons of rare earth supply per month, which may be conducive to Apple to expand its market, what is going on?
Next we will take a look together, we know that although apple mobile phone is doing well, but he has also been developing his own CPU chip and baseband chip, although apple mobile phone with a series of processor chips performance is quite good, but in the baseband chip, then Apple's own chip is not the best, then Apple in order to get rid of the limitations of Qualcomm baseband chips, Apple also reached a cooperation with Intel before, and used Intel's baseband chip, but after use also let the apple mobile phone signal problems , many users have reflected that Apple's mobile phone signal has become worse, and finally Apple can't see it, and had to reconcile with Qualcomm again to pay Qualcomm a huge compensation, only to reuse Qualcomm's baseband chip, it can be said that Apple has always wanted to independently develop a good baseband chip, so that he does not have to rely on others.
But the premise of developing chips is to have a large number of raw materials, rare earths are very critical, which is not Apple has signed a cooperation agreement with a company in Jiangsu, mainland China.
According to the announcement released by Jiangsu Huahong Technology, its wholly-owned subsidiary Xingtai Technology signed a long-term supply agreement with Ganzhou Keli Rare Earth New Materials Co., Ltd., a purchaser authorized by Apple in the United States, which is from January to December this year, and sells about 50 tons of rare earths at a price of 906,000 yuan per ton per month.
If you calculate it in a year, that is, about 600 tons of rare earths, then Jiangsu this company will supply Apple with 50 tons of rare earths per month, with these rare earths as raw materials, then Apple will have more spare energy to refine its super baseband chip, if Apple is successful, there is no doubt that its market share will be further expanded.
So I think some experts said not to forget the lesson of Huawei, because Huawei was just suppressed by the United States before, and it was not long before the lesson was still fresh in the eye, I think in some scarce resources, we save a little use is not excessive, we all know that China has the world's largest rare earth reserves, but also the world's largest rare earth producing country, our rare earths can account for more than 70% of the world's reserves at most.
But we really mined too much before, and now our rare earths have dropped to about 20% of the world's reserves. Statistical reports show that if we still follow the previous mining rate, our rare earth reserves are likely to be only enough to mine for another 15 to 20 years, and it is estimated that if you use it until 2050, our largest rare earth exporter may also have to rely on external imports to meet our requirements.
Therefore, it is a good thing to save a province in rare earth resources for their own use, in the era of integrated circuits, holding rare earths in hand means holding a lot of initiative.
Look at whether it is Europe and the United States or Japan's high-tech microelectronics companies, they do chip semiconductors need a large number of rare earths, and China has a complete rare earth supply chain, 90% of the world's rare earths are supplied by China, we also have technical advantages, the price of rare earths is also cheap, in 1978, China developed a technology called cascade extraction, which completely subverted the traditional separation technology, and pushed China's rare earth industry to a high-end position overnight.
Then the state-owned factories immediately set to work on the project, because it was very profitable. Later, state-owned and private enterprises in various places slowly joined, which instantly pushed China's rare earth industry to the peak. Our huge production capacity also directly impacted the rare earth market around the world, because we had this technology, so the mining cost was low, and there were also advanced smelting technologies. At that time, our country had a very big competitiveness in the world, and some countries could not continue under the competition of prices.
In the early 1980s, China's rare earth production was only about 20 tons, and by the 1990s, it had reached the scale of 10,000 tons, and the speed was very fast. In 2010, it reached a peak of 120,000 tons, but the total demand for rare earths in the world that year was only 100,000 tons, and we mined too much, disorderly competition, and later led to a decline in prices. In recent years, the mainland has also established China Rare Earth Group Co., Ltd., which can ensure that we can improve the weakness of prices to a certain extent and enhance our international competitiveness.
Let's look at the United States, it only after 2010 to find that this rare earth is too important, and the Rare Earth industry in the United States is missing, but the United States wants to restart its own rare earth public chain also needs more than ten or twenty years, in 2018, the United States President also authorized the United States rare earth company to restart the mine that has been sealed for nearly 20 years, and it can already be seen that the United States actually has a sense of crisis for a long time. Now the number of patents for rare earths in China is more than the United States 23,000 pieces, this is our, technical barriers, this technical barrier is through the entire rare earth industry chain in many areas, such as what mining exploration, raw material processing, refining metallurgy, as well as research and development and material applications, etc., so there are some people on the Internet who say that the United States does not mine rare earths, because they are not in order to protect the environment, the main reason is that the United States does not have a complete industrial chain and more cost-saving mining technology, This is also a result of economic globalization, which also makes the mainland hold the rare earth trump card, we must make good use of it, we must save a little, we have to save a little, we have to save a little.
For European and American high-tech companies like Intel, if they don't have such an important material, even if your technology is high, you are not easy to cook without rice, where do you go to get high-end chips? For us, in the future, we have sufficient resources, we only need to catch up in the manufacturing technology of chips, and now the country is doing the same, we all know that China's first chip university has been officially announced in the past two years, called Nanjing Integrated Circuit University.
This address was chosen, Jinling is specifically for the training of chip talents, then the graduates of this school will directly correspond to large enterprises such as Huawei, HiSilicon, and SMIC in the future to provide high-quality talents for these enterprises, which in turn can also provide technical and resource support to the school. It can be said that our cultivation of chip talents is already on the string.
I have to say that although the external to our electronics industry is under some pressure, but on the other hand is also a sufficient driving force, I believe that there will be more chip universities in the future, there will be a large number of high-end chip talents, then I believe that our domestic mobile phones, its chips can one day be compared with Apple.