Figure: Figure worm
Source: 21tech
Author: Luo Yiqi
Editor: Zhang Weixian
The smartphone market has entered a bottleneck period of development for a long time, but many data statistics show that the demand for the high-end machine market has not been fully met.
This has become the reason why the industrial chain is actively seeking to break through the high-end market, for this reason, the terminal manufacturers themselves for a single scenario of the chip self-research capabilities are advancing, but also in the joint low-level SoC chip manufacturers to carry out joint tuning, and consider joint exploration of new applications.
Li Jie, president of OPPO Find product line, told the 21st Century Business Herald that the OPPO Find X5 Pro Tianji edition, which is about to be launched recently, is promoted in such a context.
"This cooperation with the Tianji 9000 chip is the most in-depth cooperation between us and MediaTek in the flagship product." He said, "We just borrowed mediaTek's integrated chip from the beginning; to slowly discuss open architecture with MediaTek, which can make our differentiated experience reflected in AI and imaging." This time it is more comprehensive, and from the very beginning of the SoC bottom layer, including signal networks, basic communications and other aspects have begun to cooperate more deeply. This time the model is a continuation of the previous one, or a big upgrade. ”
Of course, the industry has always believed that sprinting to the high-end is always a process that requires long-term accumulation, which needs to include R&D accumulation, ecological integration, marketing and marketing matching, and will also make the joint ecology of the high-end dispute increasingly rich.
The main chip competes for the high end
In the early days of the development of smart phones, the industry consensus was mostly the model of high-end mobile phones using Qualcomm chips, mid-end mobile phones using MediaTek chips, and low-end mobile phones choosing domestic chips. As Apple's self-developed chips continue to innovate, the Android camp is increasingly hoping to sprint to the high-end market, which makes the past thinking habits of the main chip market gradually adjusted.
According to the statistics of the research agency Counterpoint, in the AP/SOC market in the fourth quarter of 2021, MediaTek still ranked first in the industry shipments with a share of 33%, followed by Qualcomm in second place with a 30% share.
Share of the top six AP/SOC chip companies in 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2021
Source: Counterpoint
The agency pointed out that the narrowing of the proportional difference between the two is related to a certain inventory adjustment in the Chinese Android camp; qualcomm's strategy is to prioritize the sale of high-end chips, which can ensure that it obtains relatively high profitability and is slightly less affected by chip shortages. Apple is able to maintain the demand for healthy high-end products, so that it can firmly rank third with a ratio of 21%.
Changes may occur in 2022, with the release of the high-end Snapdragon 8 chip at the end of the previous year, MediaTek released the flagship chip Tianji 9000, indicating that there will be more participants in the high-end chip market to enter the competition.
Li Yanji, deputy general manager of MediaTek's wireless communication division, analyzed, "From mediaTek's point of view, mobile phones have now entered the tide of consumption upgrades, and then we believe that the flagship market is a must for all manufacturers, we are also very optimistic about this market, at this point in time, the emergence of Tianji 9000 is also in line with this market opportunity." He further pointed out that in the past flagship market, especially the Android market, there were very few chip options." The market also urgently needs better solutions to bring more innovation, especially for power consumption and heat generation, which is also one of the most important future development directions of the Tianji series. ”
Of course, in the context of the slowdown of Moore's Law today, chip manufacturers may face more difficulties to seek a breakthrough.
Li Yanji admitted that the evolution of the process does seem to be slowing down in speed. But more importantly, in the perspective of chip design, whether it is CPU, GPU, APU or image ISP, multimedia, communication related technology modules, more importantly, rely on the chip design company itself. In particular, mediaTek in some global energy efficiency optimization, how to achieve better experience improvement through architectural design.
Li Junnan, technical planning director of MediaTek's wireless communication division, also pointed out, "If we take the experience perspective, we still have a lot to work on the mobile phone chip. For example, the game experience at the end game level, better rendering technology, and more power-saving technology, which are some of the main improvement directions we have in the post-chip planning. ”
In this process, the capabilities of hardware and software should also be closely matched. Therefore, Li Junnan said that on the road of flagship machine experience, software ecological construction is very critical. To this end, MediaTek has prepared accordingly. "The first is the open architecture of Tianji, we are not only facing the terminal, but also face the close cooperation of third-party software development partners; the second is the AI part we prepared NeuroPilot, we have a very close algorithm cooperation company, or the head algorithm + application company." We provide open architecture, complete and effective development tools, so that the head development team can make good results. ”
He continued that in the face of the game part, MediaTek will maintain close joint investigation cooperation with the head game company, "playing smoothly and reducing hot, which is the basic goal." The more active goal is to work with game engine companies on advanced technologies, such as ray tracing, which is a longer-term partnership path, and we will continue to invest in and support this part of the game. ”
The industrial chain is jointly seeking change
The oppo high-end new machine is also the first commercial model equipped with MediaTek's high-end chips, showing that both sides hope to use this to carry out collaborative precipitation in the high-end market. What's more, in the early process of OPPO's transformation from Blu-ray DVD to smart machine, MediaTek is already an important supporter of its industrial chain.
According to Li Yanji, OPPO and MediaTek are long-term strategic partners, and OPPO is the manufacturer with the largest shipment of chips in 2021. "We have been exploring the possibility of cooperation on the flagship. There will be more cooperation opportunities in the future to create a mobile phone that meets the user experience and truly flagship performance OPPO+MediaTek Tianji, which is a common goal of both sides in the high-end in the future. ”
He further pointed out that the cooperation and joint investigation between the two is an unprecedented human input. "Earlier, we still had different levels of discussion with OPPO about the extent of the flagship experience. Actually started doing OPPO Find X5 Pro Tianji Edition we polished for almost 1 year or so. I think flagships will take longer and longer to innovate in the future. So we spend a lot of time on every flagship discussion, and there are in-depth discussions in all aspects. ”
Li Jie added that in this nearly year-long joint exploration process, OPPO has invested more than 2,000 R&D personnel in various fields.
Joint interview scene, source: officially provided
Specifically, he said that the high-end model of OPPO uses The Tianji 9000 chip is mainly based on the overall performance and energy efficiency ratio. "We exchanged deeply with mediaTek colleagues and found that Tianji 9000 has a very advanced concept and architecture to do in the entire chip architecture, whether IT IS CPU or GPU. In addition, under this architecture, such as ISP can achieve the top performance of 9 billion pixels per second; the MediaTek platform has been communicating with us more in depth in AI, and the AI performance on the image is very fully mined. ”
"Tight supply chainSWY I think it's a matter of balancing supply and demand in the short-term market. Although everyone will be affected to varying degrees, it is not an important reason for us to choose Tianji 9000. Li Jie told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that OPPO chose to cooperate with Tianji 9000 in depth on the flagship, with the purpose of bringing more experience and product innovation. For the supply chain, what we can do is to better control our product rhythm and order rhythm to ensure that our market and users will not be affected, which is more important. ”
Of course, it is precisely because both sides hope to use this as a fulcrum to better explore the high-end mobile phone market, which has also become a challenge at present.
Li Jie said frankly, "I think oppo, MediaTek, brand high-end are our challenges, how to make more consumers, users and the market accept us in the choice of flagship models, this is a relatively big challenge." ”
However, because the cooperation time is relatively recent, the cooperation version released this time does not carry OPPO's self-developed Mariana NPU chip. "Our technical interconnection and algorithm synergy are completely connected. To reveal a message, we are already in the process of debugging the entire Tianji series and the work of mariana chips, and we can look forward to it this year. Li Jie continued.
It is reported that not only the mobile phone hardware level, OPPO and MediaTek have also jointly promoted the expansion of the European operator market.
Based on this, Li Jie said that in the face of the high-end market, OPPO believes that there are three major breakthrough points: the opportunity for the underlying technology to move towards chip capabilities, the innovation of mobile phone forms, and the brand opportunities in the context of the big era.
"Self-developed chips or working more closely with SoCs can break the situation of homogeneous competition, including OPPO and MediaTek working together to solve key problems with key technologies, which is a very big opportunity." He further analyzed that the creation of new forms of mobile phones such as folding screens is a good opportunity for the development of domestic and even overseas high-end markets; in addition, in terms of brands, "OPPO has been more well known to the public in the past is the Reno series, R series, and now we have a more stable high-end product layout, as well as more stable brand and marketing resource investment, global investment, whether in china or internationally, for Chinese brands is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." ”
Editor: Lu Taoran