Produced | Tiger Sniff Technology Group
The author | Marutoyama
The header image | IC Photo
"On the surface it's a mobile phone, it's actually a razor, on the surface it's a hair dryer, but it's also a razor."
In the movie "Domestic Lingling Paint", several strange inventions make the absurd and uninhibited image of the male protagonist jump on the screen, but limited by the background of the times, Zhou Xingchi's imagination space has not been fully utilized.
For example, you can design a wine bottle, but it is actually a display; you can also design a handbag, but it is also a display. This is not the artist's fantasy world, but a flexible screen product made by Royole Technology.
Compared with the above unrealistic innovations, the company also has a more resounding name - the folding screen mobile phone pioneer. From the perspective of time, Royole Technology is indeed the first manufacturer to launch commercial folding screen mobile phones, and it has been rated by the BBC as an iconic mobile phone in the history of the development of the world communications industry.
Left-handed flexible screen application, right-handed folding screen mobile phone, Royole Technology relies on these two concepts to raise nearly 10 billion yuan of financing in the past decade.
The exhibition may be the only application scenario of this "flexible screen wine bottle"
But Royole Technology did not change the world as desired, and could not even save itself. Since September last year, Royole Technology has been mired in a storm of wage arrears and layoffs, and the outside world has begun to question whether the company has the ability to maintain normal operations.
Just last week, Royole Technology sent an email to all employees, saying, "The company's various business operations are efficient and orderly, most of the projects are in full swing, not all employees are on holiday." ”
Before this email was sent, most of royole's employees received verbal notice from the company and were asked to "force a holiday."
Different from the calmness shown by Royole Technology to employees, on April 13, Liu Shuwei, director and researcher of the China Enterprise Research Center of the Central University of Finance and Economics, issued a paper entitled "Saving Royole", calling on governments at all levels to actively help Royole Technology solve the problem of fund shortage.
As an independent director of Royole Technology, Liu Shuwei has the right and even the obligation to find a glimmer of life for Royole, which is mired in the quagmire, but the description of Royole's independent technology and mass production capabilities in the article is debatable.
The more important question is, for a company that does not have the ability to make its own blood, is it really necessary for the government and capital to lend a helping hand?
Samsung chasing Royole? Wait until 2024?
In 2017, Royole Technology invested in the construction of the first foldable fully flexible display mass production line in Longgang District, Shenzhen. Prior to this, Royole Technology has obtained 800 million US dollars of project funds through debt financing and D round financing, and its investment lineup is luxurious, including WARMSUN Holding Group, Hanfu Capital, Tanshi Capital and other domestic and foreign financial giants.
This production line has triggered extensive discussion in the industry at the beginning of production, and the focus is mostly on the price of this production line, according to the information on the official website of Royole Technology, the total investment of this production line is about 11 billion yuan. Prior to this, the cost of the same 6-generation production line in the industry was generally around 45 billion yuan to 50 billion yuan.
According to Liu Shuwei, Royole Technology is "doing the biggest thing with the least amount of money."
"Foldable fully flexible display mass production line, the investment amount is only 1/7 of the traditional display panel production line of the same production scale (6.5 billion yuan VS 46.5 billion yuan)"
Liu Shuwei deliberately emphasized "the same mass production scale", so what is the corresponding mass production scale of the industry investment of 46.5 billion yuan?
Here we can refer to the BOE Chongqing 6th generation AMOLED production line that was put into operation at the end of last year, the total investment of the production line is just 46.5 billion yuan, and the design capacity has reached 48K / month. According to the prospectus previously released by Royole Technology, in 2018, the company's design production capacity was 11.67 thousand sheets, and the actual production capacity was only 1.76 thousand sheets.
That is to say, the so-called Royole Technology production line investment has been greatly reduced, not because of the improvement brought about by its technological leadership, but only because of the inefficiency of production capacity. Moreover, the 6.5 billion yuan investment amount mentioned by Liu Shuwei is also different from the caliber of 11 billion yuan officially announced by Royole Technology.
Not only is there a problem in terms of production capacity, but also the gold content of Royole Technology's proud ULT-NSSP technology (ultra-low temperature non-silicon intelligent process integration technology) is also a question.
In the article "Saving Royole", Liu Shuwei compared the ULT-NSSP technology with the traditional LTPS technology route, and said that the former "has a lower manufacturing cost than the LTPS technology dominated by South Korea's Samsung, with higher yield rate and better bending performance." ”
"South Korea has listed the non-silicon mixture semiconductor display technology route similar to Royole Technology's ULT-NSSP technology as the next generation of national research projects after LTPS/LTPO, led by Samsung and planned to be completed in 2024."
This remark really subverts the traditional perception in people's minds: due to the late start of the domestic OLED industry, Chinese panel manufacturers have long played the role of technology catch-up in this field. This is particularly evident in terms of market share, with CINNO Research data showing that in the full year of 2021, Samsung displayed AMOLED panel shipments of 480 million, maintaining a huge advantage with a global market share of 72.3%.
And now, Samsung shows to go back to learning Royole's technical route?
Although it sounds incredible, Tiger Sniff still seeks verification from Samsung Display in the spirit of truth-seeking, and a person in charge of Samsung Display Technology Development clearly stated, "We examined this technology two years ago, but there is no intention of following up." ”
Compared with LTPS technology, the royole that is sword-edged is probably not dominant
Compared with Samsung learning Royole, what is more surprising is that the latter is enough to make the industry ashamed of the yield.
Cui Jilong, general manager of Dixian Consulting, believes that "at present, the OLED business of Chinese mainland panel manufacturers is basically in a state of loss, and there are two most important reasons, one is the oversupply in the industry, and the other is the yield problem." "But for Royole Technology, yield doesn't seem to be a problem.
"In the fourth quarter of 2021, the Shenzhen Municipal Government hired a number of professional institutions to conduct on-site assessment of Royole Technology's fully flexible screen head film production line, which lasted for 1 month and assessed the yield of 81.6%."
This level is already on par with the domestic OLED giant BOE, or even slightly higher than the latter. But in Royole's prospectus, the production data does not seem to match this figure.
Cui Jilong told Tiger Sniff, "Without considering inventory, the actual output of panel manufacturers is determined by three aspects: design capacity, utilization rate and yield. ”
Royole Technology's prospectus shows that from January to June 2020, the company's design capacity is 23.33 thousand sheets, and the capacity utilization rate (utilization rate) in the same period is 5%, if calculated at a yield rate of 81.6%, then the actual output of Royole Technology in the first half of 2020 can be calculated to be 952 large boards.
Usually, a large board of the 6th generation AMOLED production line can be cut into 150-200 small pieces, considering the large size of the folding screen screen, even if it is calculated by 100 small pieces, then the screen small pieces produced by Royole Technology in this period should also be 95200 pieces.
However, in the prospectus of Royole Technology, the output of screen films in the same period was only 48600. Inconsistent data may only be explained by two reasons:
Either Royole Technology's design capacity is falsely reported, or there is a problem with yield.
Royole didn't have a chance
On the day after "Save Royole" triggered a discussion from the outside world, Liu Shuwei posted again, this time she gave a more detailed rescue plan:
"In the first step, Royole Technology conducts basic research from 0 to 1. In the second step, Royole Technology works with customers to carry out research and development from 1 to N. The hardest part is the second step! High-tech companies like Royole Technology are looking for customers, which is their weakness."
Did Royole Technology not have a chance in the past? On the contrary, it may have been the most promising technology company, as early as 2014, Royole Technology released the world's thinnest color flexible display, although the flexible screen at this time can not meet the demand for mass production, but in this period, domestic BOE and other manufacturers have not even set up similar products.
With the success of flexible displays, all kinds of capital began to flock to Royole Technology, IDG Capital, Songhe Capital, Shenzhen Venture Capital... These startups can't think of names that appear in the list of investors in Royole Technology, and even Xu Xiaoping, a well-known angel investor, has expressed remorse for missing Royole's investment.
At this time, if Royole Technology develops according to the ideal script, it should control half of the domestic folding screen industry in the future, but what is surprising is that with the commercialization of folding screen mobile phones, Royole Technology did not break into the supply chain of any head mobile phone manufacturer, but instead launched its own terminal brand "Roupai" in 2018.
In the Red Sea era of smart phones, instead of sitting in the upstream of the industrial chain and relying on core technologies to grab profits, but personally making mobile phones, this strategy is confusing.
An industrial chain practitioner revealed to Tiger Sniff, "It is not that there has been no contact with terminal manufacturers, but that terminal factories have not bought it, so they have to establish a brand self-digestion." ”
Regarding the reason for the abandonment of Royole Technology, the insider did not say much, but it is not difficult to guess that the folding screen panel of Royole Technology is probably not as good as advertised.
Nowadays, the birth of "Roupai" is more like the helpless move of Royole Technology
In fact, Liu Shuwei's proposal to "carry out research and development from 1 to N with customers" is one of the most fashionable trends in the mobile phone industry at present.
The advantage of this cooperation model is that the industrial chain can quickly realize the commercial landing of new technologies through complementary advantages. For example, before the release of the under-screen camera technology of the fire last year, OPPO and BOE, Xiaomi and TCL Huaxing, ZTE and Visionox have reached a similar upstream and downstream industry alliance - mobile phone factories are responsible for solving algorithm problems, and panel factories are responsible for solving screen material problems.
But for Royole Technology, looking up, there is no place for itself in the industrial chain.
Since then, Royole Technology has pinned all its hopes on the terminal brand Roupai, but in the consumer market, this company has also collapsed into the sand. Royole Technology's prospectus shows that in the first half of 2020, the company's consumer product revenue was 87.6869 million yuan, even if all according to the folding screen mobile phone shipments, considering the pricing of FlexPai 2 8788 yuan, the sales of FlexPai folding screen mobile phones are still not more than 10,000 units.
In the B-end market, it is not welcomed by the industrial chain, and in the C-end market, it is not bought by consumers, which is the most true portrayal of Royole Technology at present.
Write at the end
Some people attribute the failure of Royole Technology to over-reliance on the support of the Shenzhen Municipal Government, but looking back at the domestic display industry in the past two decades, from BOE to Huaxing Optoelectronics, to Huike and Shentianma, which is not the result of large financial investment in local finances?
The difference is that these companies can seriously consider the current real problems, and cautiously move forward in every change in the display industry, and eventually become a key force that can influence the global display industry.
However, in the current industry background, even if Royole Technology is down-to-earth to do screens, the industry can no longer provide valuable opportunities in the past, because the current trend of China's display industry is how to limit overcapacity and the disorderly expansion of manufacturers, rather than stimulating capacity growth.
Royole Technology, which missed the historical opportunity, is like a mirror, reflecting the fantasies of domestic "concept companies" again and again.