Produced by | Tiger Sniff Technology Group
Author | MarutoYama
Header image | IC Photo
Perhaps MediaTek would not have thought that the first god assist in 2022 would come from Samsung.
According to SamMobile, the Galaxy S22 released by Samsung this year will launch two versions of Qualcomm Snapdragon and MediaTek Tianji for consumers to choose, which means that at least at this stage, its own Exynos chip has basically failed.
This is a message that is enough to make Samsung users happy. Two years ago, Samsung fans launched a petition on Change.org — "Please stop selling us phones with Exynos chips." Orion's current predicament is not surprising.
But for MediaTek, this is indeed a sudden surprise. It should be noted that for a long time in the past, Samsung's mobile department did not want to see MediaTek. In the Helio era, no matter how MediaTek pushes its own high-end chips, Samsung will unswervingly lock the scope of cooperation between the two in the low-end machine market.
This time, Samsung can take the initiative to throw an olive branch, and the reason is inseparable from MediaTek's breakthrough in the high-end chip position. Since the release of the Tianji 9000, a number of head manufacturers, including Honor, Xiaomi, Vivo, OPPO, etc., have begun to introduce this SoC on flagship models. Of course, in view of MediaTek's relatively weak brand appeal, these manufacturers still choose the same dual-version flagship strategy as Samsung.
But in any case, the collective shift of the Android camp still reflects a drastic change in the current chip market: MediaTek already has the strength to compete with Qualcomm in the high-end chip market.
This scene seems to have been seen somewhere.
In 2017, AMD, which has been suppressed for a long time by Intel's "pendulum tactics", launched a Ryzen™ processor, sweeping away the haze that had lasted for more than a decade, "AMD, YES! "Word of mouth began among digital enthusiasts. Before that, AMD, like MediaTek, had the only means of survival by reducing prices to hold the low-end market.
And now, AMD has been equal to Intel in the PC field, so will MediaTek, which has a similar development path, replicate AMD's success?
"The strongest spare tire"
Although MediaTek has long been subject to the label of "the father of the cottage machine", after entering the 5G era, MediaTek has become an uncompromising hidden champion in the chip field.
Starting in the third quarter of 2020, MediaTek surpassed Qualcomm to become the world's largest mobile phone chip shipper and maintained this throne to this day.
Global smartphone SoC shipments comparison, image source: Counterpoint Research
Of course, what makes MediaTek really get rid of the low-end label is not the market share, but the breakthrough of the follow-up Tianji series in the high-end market.
In December last year, MediaTek released the Tianji 9000 mobile processor platform, a chip that MediaTek had high hopes for received high attention from the industry before its release. Because before that, there was only one choice in the Android flagship camp, and the poor performance of the last two generations of Snapdragon chips in power consumption also made terminal manufacturers think about alternative solutions.
This naturally includes Samsung, although he is currently one of the few manufacturers who insist on independent core manufacturing, but the weak performance of Exynos series products has made consumers constantly hear calls to replace Exynos chips.
Even Gao Dongzhen, former president of Samsung Mobile, has said in public, "We will choose chips according to actual needs." ”
But even if the Exynos series is no longer unbearable, Samsung does not want to see its own semiconductor business competitors alone, at this time, MediaTek, which has just broken through the shackles of the high-end market, is indeed a good choice.
Looking back, Samsung, which chose the Tianji chip, is just a microcosm of the industry, and the current smartphone industry needs a spare tire more than ever.
First of all, under the influence of the epidemic, the lack of core is a topic that the mobile phone industry cannot avoid in the past two years, especially in the first half of last year, under the influence of loose monetary policy on a global scale, the terminal market rebounded rapidly, and various manufacturers panicked stockpiles.
The more critical influencing factor is that unlike Qualcomm's bet on Samsung semiconductors, MediaTek in Taiwan can obtain the most advanced process blessing of TSMC, which directly determines the all-round transcendence of this generation of Tianji 9000 on the Snapdragon 8Gen 1 in terms of power consumption and energy consumption performance, which is said to be geographical advantage.
An industry analyst believes that "Qualcomm's move may be to emulate Apple and get rid of the shackles of a single supplier, but Samsung Semiconductor's yield performance of less than 35% has indeed dragged Qualcomm's hind legs." ”
Another point that may be overlooked is that after the Huawei supply cut, domestic mobile phone manufacturers tacitly realized the importance of leaving an "alternative", and MediaTek, which has just entered the high-end position, is obviously the best choice.
After gathering the talents of the time and place, MediaTek's attack on the high-end camp is naturally more effective with half the effort.
It's too early to get a foothold
The great success of the Tianji 9000 series has made MediaTek very profitable.
According to the Taiwan media "Economic Daily", MediaTek's revenue in March crossed the 50 billion yuan mark for the first time, reaching NT$59.179 billion (about 13.060 billion yuan), a monthly increase of 47.8%, setting a record for monthly revenue and growth.
Although MediaTek did not disclose the reason for the surge in revenue, combined with the recent intensive release of domestic manufacturers, it is not difficult to guess the role played by the Tianji 9000 in it.
As of now, the head manufacturers in the Android camp have released flagship models equipped with Tianji 9000 SoC, but from the perspective of product pricing strategy, the biggest problem existing at this stage of MediaTek is the lack of brand appeal.
Taking OPPO Find X5 Pro as an example, on the same model, the starting price of the model equipped with the Tianji 9000 is 5799 yuan, while the model equipped with the Snapdragon 8Gen1 has a starting price of 6299 yuan.
Although there are some differences between the two models in other configurations, such as the lack of Mariana X chips in the Tianji version, OPPO's intentional "high-low collocation" also directly reflects the current more embarrassing market positioning of MediaTek: although the performance of high-end chips has not lost Qualcomm competitors, and even leads the latter in individual indicators, it is still impossible to guarantee that consumers will pay for it.
An insider of the industrial chain revealed to tiger sniff, "According to the different purchase volumes, the unit price of Tianji 9000 is about 25%-30% cheaper than snapdragon 8Gen 1, which is a great advantage of MediaTek." ”
But with the rise in TSMC's foundry costs, this advantage may be wiped out.
In March, TSMC said that due to cost pressures and tight supply, the price of TSMC's 8-inch wafer foundry service will increase by 10% to 20%, and the 12-inch advanced process is still under evaluation and is expected to take effect in March this year.
There is no doubt that the rise in the price of upstream wafer foundry will directly affect the future pricing of Tianji series chips, in contrast, Qualcomm, which relies on Samsung FOUNDC, may be relatively small in terms of price increase, which also means that in the future MediaTek will be difficult to further open the market through price advantages.
The next test: sleepiness is change
Not long ago, Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingxi predicted that China's major Android manufacturer brands have drastically cut orders for new machines, cutting orders to accumulate 170 million new aircraft shipments, a 20% reduction compared with the original plan. Among them, MediaTek was the most affected, accounting for 70% of the single cut.
According to the domestic mobile phone sales data released by data research agency CINNO Research, in February this year, the shipment of smartphones in the Chinese mainland market was only 23.48 million units, down 20.5% year-on-year.
The point that needs to be noted here is that in the first quarter of 2020, due to the continuous impact of the new crown epidemic across the country, logistics and transportation have been strictly controlled, and offline channels are basically closed. In the context of the relaxation of restrictions in the logistics industry, the stabilization of offline channels, and the Spring Festival in February, the reduction in demand this year is even more serious than two years ago.
Such a serious decline actually has its signs. If you look back at the conferences of mobile phone manufacturers in the past two years, you will find that manufacturers are almost sparing no effort to promote their own imaging systems, admittedly, this is inseparable from the current "big image era", but the main reason is that today's smart phone industry is really unable to provide transformative innovation.
In many cases, the technology that is blown to the sky by various mobile phone manufacturers does not even have a 3.5mm headphone hole to be practical, and those over-publicity in turn overdraft consumers' willingness to buy.
Perhaps aware of the changes in the wind direction of the mobile phone industry in advance, at Qualcomm's investor conference last year, CEO Ammon highlighted Qualcomm's layout in the field of autonomous driving.
In 2021, Qualcomm and General Motors announced an agreement on the Snapdragon Automotive Driving Platform, which will support digital driving and next-generation telematics systems. If you push the time forward, the launch of the SA8195P chip has left Qualcomm alone in the past two years, and this car chip that changes the rules of the industry is only based on the Snapdragon 855 platform.
Not only in the field of autonomous driving, from the Internet of Things to meta-universe hardware, Qualcomm has a trend of diversifying its chip business in recent years to get rid of the shackles of a single source of income.
Qualcomm is no longer satisfied with the traditional consumer electronics market
Similarly, MediaTek did not choose to sit on the sidelines. By the end of 2021, MediaTek has directly invested in 24 companies in Chinese mainland, mostly in the fields of IC design, RF front-end, software and information services.
Among them, there are some "hardcore companies", such as Dafa Technology, which focuses on Bluetooth wireless audio system solutions, which has grown into a standard setter in the industry, enabling MediaTek to build an ecological chain in the field of TWS.
Write at the end
In the face of changes in the wind direction of the smartphone industry, Qualcomm chooses to expand the value boundary across industries, and MediaTek is more inclined to give full play to the advantages of the industrial chain and cultivate new growth catalysts in vertical industries.
It is difficult to say whether these two paths are superior or inferior, but what is certain is that in today's smart phone industry, the head chip manufacturers have prepared in advance for the possible decline, and the clear division of labor boundaries in the past industry chain may gradually blur in the future.
In this context, the preset battlefield of the two has long been separated from the chip industry, compared with the feud between AMD and Intel, Qualcomm and MediaTek have more of a sense of confrontation with fate.
Whether MediaTek can become the next AMD doesn't seem to matter so much.