In the impression of many consumers, high-end Android mobile phones use Qualcomm, low-end mobile phones use MediaTek, and "cottage machines" with other domestic chips have once become unwritten rules in the industry, but with the changes in the market pattern, the inherent chip pattern is also being broken. Especially in the high-end mobile phone chip market, Qualcomm's "one big" situation is changing.
According to data released by Counterpoint, in the fourth quarter of 2021, MediaTek became the first place in the smartphone market segment with a market share of 33%, while Qualcomm ranked second, up 18% month-on-month, accounting for 30% of the share. From the report of the research institution, it can be seen that the global lack of core has caused a lot of impact on the industry, but Qualcomm's quarterly performance is still very eye-catching.
Apple ranked third with a market share of 21%, to be honest, this achievement can be said to be quite scary, after all, Apple is different from other manufacturers, A series processors are never taken out, which is enough to explain the horror of iPhone sales.
Domestic chip manufacturers Unigroup Zhanrui and Samsung Orion ranked fourth or fifth with a market share of 11% and 7% respectively. As for the Kirin HiSilicon chip that we are all familiar with, it has been included in the others queue, and the market share is only 1%. So for us, can the strong rise of MediaTek and ZhanRui completely change the current monopoly of the mobile chip market by Qualcomm and Apple? What will happen to the chip market after that?
MediaTek is on the rise
As the most anticipated chip manufacturer in the past two years, MediaTek's performance in 2021 can be described as quite outstanding, according to relevant statistics, MediaTek in the price segment below 200 US dollars (equivalent to 1270 yuan) "killed the four parties", the market share exceeded 50%. Positioned in the low-end, Tianji 1000 series, Tianji 900, Tianji 800 and Tianji 700 series have won good word-of-mouth sales in the market.
This is mainly due to the decline of Kirin and Qualcomm's lack of competitiveness, and now in the low-end mobile phone market, almost all mobile phone manufacturers including OPPO, vivo, xiaomi and honor will launch models equipped with Tianji series chips. The global smartphone market share of The global smartphone market share of Tianji chip mobile platform reached 40% in 2021, ranking first in the world. MediaTek officially said that in China's 4G, 5G smartphone market share MediaTek is also the first, the world's 5 mobile phones have 2 equipped with MediaTek Tianji chips.
In addition to the low-end market "killing the four parties", MediaTek has also launched the Tianji 9000 series positioned in the high-end market, for now, consumers are very much looking forward to the performance of this model, and its reputation is also expected to help MediaTek officially gain a foothold in the high-end market. According to Counterpoint' forecast, MediaTek is expected to capture about 10% of the high-end smartphone market in 2022.
However, it is not realistic for MediaTek to completely surpass Qualcomm in just a few years, after all, the main battlefield of MediaTek is still the low-end market, and its performance in the high-end market is still far worse than Qualcomm. Therefore, MediaTek's position as the world's largest mobile phone chip supplier is not sitting steadily, Qualcomm is also trying to regain the world's first position, MediaTek slightly slack, will be overtaken.
In general, MediaTek has been able to rise rapidly in the past two years and be recognized by the entire consumer market, mainly because Huawei was forced to give up the market, so that MediaTek can quickly gain an advantage in the low-end market. Of course, this is also related to MediaTek's own accelerated transformation speed, it is not difficult to find that from the beginning of the Tianji 1000 series, MediaTek has always talked about impacting the high-end market as the goal, with the advent of the Tianji 9000 series and the application of a large number of mobile phone manufacturers, MediaTek's charge horn will be officially blown.
Apple achieves full self-development
Compared with Qualcomm and MediaTek, Apple's performance is relatively stable, although with the best-selling iPhone 13 series, Apple's market share in Q4 is 21%, but it is down 1% compared with the same period last year. Xiao Lei speculated that this is probably because Apple has been affected by the chip shortage, resulting in shipments of the 13 series being significantly inferior to the 2020 iPhone 12 series.
Although Apple's performance is more general in terms of chip shipments, it should be noted that from 2020, Apple has begun to move towards the road of full self-development. Back in 2020, Apple launched Apple's M1 self-developed chip based on ARM architecture at the autumn conference and applied it to three new Mac products. And this fledgling M1, the performance of the intel and AMD mainstream processor products at that time, the performance of the entire industry to marvel.
Cook said at the press conference that it will take two years to switch the processor of the Mac series products from intel to M series chips. It turns out that Cook did not brag, not only launched the more terrifying performance of M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra, the M1 top mobile chip downgraded to the iPad Pro and Air series.
Now Apple's self-development road is only the most critical 5G baseband, once Apple in the past two years to develop a performance is not worse than Qualcomm baseband, then Apple can completely get rid of the dependence on Qualcomm, after reducing the dependence on the outside, Apple will be more independent, the voice in the market will be further enhanced.
Compared with MediaTek or even Qualcomm, Apple's advantages are still huge, after all, Apple's chip reputation and sales in the market are first-class, even if it is as strong as Qualcomm, it is difficult to shake Apple's position in the high-end chip market. What's more, Apple has launched four top chips in the PC market today, and it is not afraid to face such strong enemies as Intel and AMD. So in 2022, Apple's performance may be even better, and it is not limited to mobile phone chips.
Qualcomm is still steady
As can be seen from the data table above, in the high-end market, Qualcomm's market share continued to rise, with a market share of 65% and 55%, respectively, 300-499 US dollars (equivalent to 1909 yuan - 3175 yuan) and more than 500 US dollars of mobile phone market.
Among them, Snapdragon 8Gen1, Snapdragon 888, Snapdragon 870, Snapdragon 778G into a large shipment, in the same price of products consumers will also give priority to buying mobile phones equipped with these processors, after all, for consumers, in the case of Kirin shortage, Qualcomm has become their only choice, which is mainly due to Qualcomm's reputation accumulated over the years.
Unlike MediaTek, Qualcomm does not pay too much attention to the low-end market, but focuses most of its energy on the research and development of high-end chips, after all, the income of high-end chips is higher and MediaTek is still difficult to be recognized by the market in the high-end market. More importantly, Qualcomm can also increase the supply of its main foundry partners by dually purchasing key products, which is Qualcomm's biggest advantage at present.
And in the 5G baseband chip market, Qualcomm's performance is still the king level, and its market share in Q4 2021 has reached 76%, up 13% compared with the same period last year. Of course, this is mainly due to the fact that the iPhone 13 series is fully equipped with Qualcomm baseband and other procurement needs from OEM foundries. It is worth noting that although the penetration rate of 5G mobile phones in China is not low, the 5G network is still in the early stages, so in 2022, Qualcomm is expected to continue to increase shipments and revenue with the help of this shareholder wind.
However, perhaps Qualcomm did not put most of its energy in the low-end chip market, which led mediatek to be able to quickly penetrate in the low-end market and have more funds to develop high-end chips, thus challenging Qualcomm's authority. Therefore, for Qualcomm, the future will not only face the strong opponent of MediaTek, but also face the raid of Samsung Orion, and with the rise of domestic semiconductors, Unigroup Zhanrui is also likely to become a new force on the chip track.
Therefore, Qualcomm will increase its research and development and investment in low-end chips in 2022 to ensure that its high-end market does not lose share, and from Qualcomm's point of view, they will not allow a second MediaTek to appear. In addition, with the release of Apple's self-developed baseband in the future, Qualcomm's advantages in the baseband will become smaller and smaller, and as for how Qualcomm will respond, it can only be left to time.
Purple light exhibition sharp into domestic light?
When it comes to domestic chips, presumably everyone's first reaction is Huawei's HiSilicon chip, but for some well-known reasons, Huawei HiSilicon's performance in the Q4 quarter of 2021 was extremely bad, and its market share plummeted from 7% in the same period last year to 1%, becoming others. After Huawei's fall, the low-end market was quickly occupied by MediaTek, and the high-end market was eaten up by Qualcomm and Apple.
Although Huawei HiSilicon is difficult to reproduce the glory of that year, it is more gratifying that the performance of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui is quite outstanding, according to the data, tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui's shipments in 2021 have doubled compared with last year. This is mainly due to its still attention to the 4G chip market that other manufacturers have long ceased to pay attention to, according to another report, although 5G chips have been around for a long time, the sales of 5G mobile phones have just surpassed 4G mobile phones, which is enough to see that the 4G mobile phone market is still a chip manufacturers can not ignore.
According to the data, in 2021, Tsinghua Unigroup zhanrui occupied a 26% share in the price range below $99, followed by a 4% market share in the price range of $100-199. Due to the strong penetration of Tsinghua Unigroup in the 4G market, they have also received orders from mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Honor, Realme, and ZTE, and the customer structure has been upgraded dramatically.
Playing iron also needs its own hard, unigroup Zhanrui can obtain a large number of mobile phone manufacturers orders in the past two years, but also has a direct connection with its own chip quality. For example, the Tanggula T770 released by Tsinghua Unigroup in 2020 is the world's first 5G SoC manufactured based on TSMC's 6nm process. Zhanrui mobile phone chip from 12nm to 10nm and 7nm, and now to the 6nm EUV process, for the first time to achieve process leadership.
It is understood that the first 6nm process chip under Tsinghua Unigroup Has been officially listed, and the world's first 5G Soc chip with 6nm EUV process was born and officially entered mass production. It is worth mentioning that smartphones equipped with the chip will be able to support the common use of 2G-5G networks, support the Sub-6GHz band and NSA/SA dual-module network, and such smartphones will also be available this year.
Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui can rise rapidly in the past two years, on the one hand, due to its positive transformation and keen market sense, it can quickly gain a foothold in the "forgotten" 4G market, on the other hand, it is related to the macro environment of the domestic active betting chip field in the past two years. In 2022, Tsinghua Unigroup will rely on its years of technical accumulation and word of mouth, in the low-end market and even the high-end market and MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung and other veteran strong heads head-on hard.
In 2022, the chip market ushered in a reshuffle
It is not difficult to see that compared with the previous two years, the mobile phone chip market in 2021 ushered in a huge reshuffle, who did not expect that mediatek, which was originally positioned in the low-end, actually became the biggest dark horse in the market, and although Qualcomm Apple still performed well, the advantage was not like that year. This is a good thing for us ordinary consumers, only if the manufacturer's volume is more serious, we can get more affordable products.
However, looking back at the entire 2021, we are still difficult to use the word "satisfied" to describe the development of the chip market, although the performance of each flagship chip in terms of performance is huge, but the performance in terms of power consumption and heat generation is very general, and even seriously affects the daily experience of users. Therefore, in 2022, consumers will pay more attention to those chips that have excellent daily experience, and chip manufacturers must also understand that performance is no longer the focus, and only by making a balance between the power consumption and performance of the chip can we win more "cakes" in this seriously coiled market.
But no matter what, it is foreseeable that the competition for mobile phone chips will further intensify in 2022, and the entry of Tianji 9000 may greatly improve the situation that only Snapdragon and Apple are in the high-end market, not to mention that Samsung and Tsinghua Unigroup Are also actively developing their own high-end flagship chips. The competition in the high-end market is very likely to become the main tone of the chip market in 2022, of course, with the market down, the chip competition in the entire low-end market will also enter a new period of competition.