Per reporter: Wang Jing Per editor: Dong Xingsheng
In the mobile phone chip market, Qualcomm Snapdragon processor occupies a high-end model, and MediaTek processor mainly attacks the low-end, which is the market pattern for a long time. But now, this fixed "convention" is being broken. In mid-February, OPPO released its flagship model, OPPOFindX5 series, the world's first MediaTek Tianji 9000 chip. The series is OPPO's high-end flagship series, and the price is concentrated in the price range of 4,000 yuan to 7,000 yuan.
In recent years, MediaTek has been trying to break through the high-end market, and the Tianji 9000 is the third sprint launched by MediaTek to the high-end market. From the configuration point of view, the Tianji 9000 is considered by the outside world to be the new generation of processors that are most likely to catch up with Qualcomm. According to the official introduction, it adopts TSMC's 4nm advanced process, and the CPU adopts Armv9 architecture, including 1 ArmCortex-X2 super core with a main frequency of up to 3.05GHz, 3 ArmCortex-A710 large cores with a main frequency of up to 2.85GHz, and 4 ArmCortex-A510 energy efficiency cores with a main frequency of 1.8GHz.
MediaTek Image source: Per-warp infographic
Changing the impression of the market doesn't happen overnight. Li Jie, president of OPPOFind product line, recently said frankly in an interview with the media including the "Daily Economic News": "Last year, the largest customer in the number of mobile phone chips shipped by MediaTek was OPPO, and it is logical to use MediaTek chips on the Find series, and the strategic landing of the two sides is all-round (high-end, mid-end). However, for OPPO and MediaTek, the biggest challenge is the high-end of the brand. How to make more consumers, users and the market accept us in the choice of flagship models is a relatively big challenge. ”
MediaTek hit the high-end flagship chip market
Due to multiple factors such as the global lack of core prices and the shrinking share of Huawei HiSilicon, in the third quarter of 2020, MediaTek's share of the mobile phone market surpassed Qualcomm for the first time and became the champion in smartphone processor shipments. A few days ago, Counterpoint released the global smartphone AP/SoC chipset shipment statistics for the fourth quarter of 2021, showing that MediaTek once again got the top position in mobile phone chip shipments with a market share of 33%. This is already the sixth consecutive quarter of MediaTek's top of the mobile phone chip shipment rankings.
However, from the structural point of view, Qualcomm Snapdragon still has an absolute advantage in high-end flagship models. According to Antutu's January 2021 evaluation data, among the 10 flagship mobile phones, only 2 of Huawei's flagship mobile phones are equipped with their own Kirin chips, and 8 mobile phones are equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series.
In recent years, in order to impact the high-end flagship chip market, MediaTek has iterated a number of chips. In 2015, MediaTek launched the Helio brand, hoping to impact the flagship market in the 4G era, but ultimately failed.
In 2019, MediaTek released the first 5GSoC - Tianji 1000, gaining a foothold in the 5G mid-range mobile phone market; in early 2021, it released Tianji 1200, benchmarking Qualcomm Snapdragon 870; in November of the same year, MediaTek preemptively announced the world's first 4nm mobile phone chip Tianji 9000. The emergence of the Tianji series has gradually reversed the decline caused by mediatek's lack of performance and unreasonable scheduling of chips such as HelioX30 and HelioX10 in the previous few years.
From mediatek's point of view, OPPO put its chip on the flagship mobile phone, giving MediaTek greater support. However, in order to change the pattern of Qualcomm's "one big family" in the high-end mobile phone chip market, in addition to the relationship between partners, factors such as brand value and ecological ability are also very critical.
Image source: Per reporter Zhu Wanping photographed (data map)
For whether MediaTek can achieve the high-end dream, former industry analyst Yao Jiayang analyzed to reporters that MediaTek has a chance, at least in the share of flagship chips, there will be a pull-up situation, but this depends on the sales performance of the OPPO Find series. Xiaomi flagship machine in the domestic performance is better, but millet mainly to Qualcomm chips, MediaTek has not made a breakthrough, if MediaTek in addition to OPPO, can also break through vivo's flagship mobile phone, then its performance in the flagship market will have a greater plus. As for whether it can surpass Qualcomm numerically, it remains to be seen.
The underlying chip creates a differentiated experience
Judging from the sales data of the domestic smartphone industry in the past year, the shipment volume of Android models is slightly lower than expected. Although the epidemic obstacle and supply chain shortage are important factors, the lack of intelligent terminal innovation, the excess performance, and the white-hot competition brought about by homogenization are also indisputable facts.
With the development of the smart phone industry into the stock competition market, there is no differentiated product, bringing consumers a longer replacement cycle. At present, the average replacement cycle of China's mobile phone consumer group has reached 30 months.
5G chip display Image source: per-warp infographic
In Li Jie's view, "if you want to break the homogenization situation, you need the underlying support of the chip and use key technologies to solve key problems." Three years ago, OPPO began to develop its own imaging chip Mariana MarilicconX, which has now been put into commercial use. According to OPPO, "Mariana has placed more than 10 million orders from TSMC." In addition to imaging, in the future, in more areas such as power consumption, signal, fluency, etc., Chinese chips have the opportunity to create differentiated experiences.
As we all know, chips are capital and technology-intensive industries, a chip through design, tape-out, packaging, testing, mass production and other steps can be born, only a few companies will try. In the past, most of the terminal manufacturers combined with the market and consumer needs to purchase products or technical solutions from the upstream supply chain, but now, the world's top five mobile phone manufacturers, including Samsung, Apple, OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi, have laid out their self-developed chip business.
"On the open architecture of the Tianji 9000, we and OPPO have achieved functional breakthroughs in AI algorithms and games." Junnan Li, technical planning director of MediaTek's Wireless Communications Division, said. Li Jie further added that the cooperation between OPPO and MediaTek not only stays in the simple mobile phone hardware, but also includes the in-depth cooperation of ecology and industry trend development.
Earlier, another mobile phone manufacturer, Vivo, also opened the chip layout - vivo was deeply involved in the pre-definition stage of the chip and cooperated with the upstream chip manufacturer Samsung. In November 2019, Vivo and Samsung demonstrated the first dual-mode 5GAI chip jointly developed by the two companies - Exynos980; in 2020, the two cooperated again on exynos1080 chips. In addition, in order to enhance the competitiveness of the overall product, in September 2021, Vivo's first self-developed image chip V1 was also officially unveiled on the X70 series.
The model of joint innovation between mobile phone manufacturers and upstream chip manufacturers has changed the situation of separation between upstream product definition and downstream market demand in the past. For chip manufacturers, it can obtain direct market and consumer demand feedback from terminal manufacturers; for terminal manufacturers, chip products with better performance and stronger market consumer targeting can be obtained. Compared with blind self-research, the advantage of this is that it can maximize the use of limited resources and achieve targeted cooperation with chip manufacturers.
However, omdia analyst Li Ze told reporters that brand high-end is a complex systemic problem, and the above cooperation model is only one of many links.
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