Chinese chip companies counterattacked.
Author / Chen Shuwang
Editor / Little City Sister
Humans are naturally interested in visual images.
In the barbaric era, the reflection of the water's edge became the earliest visual image of mankind, and later with the development of civilization, people began to record images with canvases, although it was inefficient to do so. It was not until the Frenchman Daguerre invented the first camera in 1839 that humans officially entered the era of visual image.
The earliest cameras must use "cross-roll" as the imaging carrier, which is more complex and cannot be repeatedly exposed, which is very troublesome to use.
In 1873, scientists Joseph Mei and Werobi Smith discovered when studying selenium crystals that it generates an electric current after sensing light, so electronic imaging technology began to become the research direction of the industry. After years of hard work, digital cameras finally came into being and gradually replaced traditional cameras.
The imaging principle of digital cameras is very different from that of traditional cameras: the light through the lens is focused on the image sensor, and then converted into an electrical signal recorded in memory, and then converted by the computer to finally be presented as an image.
Obviously, the key to digital camera imaging lies in the image sensor, and it is thanks to the continuous iteration of the image sensor that the camera effect is now so outstanding.
Looking back at the development of image sensors, there have been 4 generations of image sensors in history.
The earliest was the emergence of optical multipliers (PMT) in the 1950s, and then many American companies began to develop imaging technologies for photoelectric and bipolar diode arrays, but these technologies have certain defects, until Bell Labs invented the CCD image sensor, so that the industry has a more unified technical route.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, a new type of CMOS circuit-based sensor (CIS chip) began commercial mass production, and due to its better performance, it gradually replaced CCD as a new mainstream route.
Although the CIS chip is not large, it accounts for about half of the value of the entire camera module. As the core key of the camera, CIS sensor technology has always been under the control of European and American companies. However, with the peak of shipments in the smartphone market and the rise of new energy vehicles, the market demand for CIS chips is constantly changing, which also leaves opportunities for Chinese companies.
An industrial revolution from Chinese companies is brewing in the CIS chip industry.
1
Undercurrents are surging
CIS chips were originally used in photography, but the overall demand was small because they were too niche.
Until the full rise of smart phones, the CIS chip industry has truly entered a golden period, and now smart phones have become the most important application scenarios for CIS chips.
According to the consulting company Yole data, the market size of CIS chips in smart phone scenarios in 2020 reached 14.068 billion US dollars, accounting for 67.8% of the global CIS market, and other scenes with a relatively high proportion were professional photography, computers, automobiles and security, with market shares of 3.8%, 8.4%, 6.9% and 7.9% respectively.
Nearly 70% of the global CIS chip market share, so that smart phones become the core battlefield of the CIS chip companies to compete, who wins this market, who can become the global leader.
The parameters that determine the CIS chip of the mobile phone are very simple, that is, the imaging ability, and the pixel level has become the key to measuring the level of imaging. At this stage, the pixel level of mainstream models can reach more than 50 million pixels, and there is a trend of further increase in pixels.
At present, Sony and Samsung account for 46% and 29% of the market share of smart phone CIS chips, respectively, the two together account for 75% of the entire market, and Howey Technology, which was acquired by Weier shares, accounts for about 10% of the entire market. It is worth noting that these three companies are also the top three companies in the global CIS chip market share, as if they have won the world with smart phones.
Although smartphones are still the main battlefield of CIS chips, after longitudinal analysis, it is easy to find that the global CIS chip industry pattern is gradually being reconstructed.
Compared with the data of 2019 and 2020, the market share of smartphones and professional photography has dropped significantly, with a decline of 1.5 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points respectively. Instead, the penetration rate of other industries has increased, especially the market share of the security industry has increased by a staggering 1.7 percentage points.
If the market share of smartphones continues to decline in the future, while the market share of other market industries continues to increase, then the factors that determine the global CIS chip pattern will change.
Between the subtle, the global CIS chip pattern has been undercurrent.
2
The next tipping point
The decline in the penetration rate of smart phone CIS chips actually has a premonition.
Prior to this, the growth brought by smartphones mainly benefited from the dual logic. First, the penetration rate of smartphones continues to increase; the second is the increase in the number of stand-alone cameras.
From 2011 to 2017, global smartphone shipments have always been in a continuous growth trend, and the increasing shipment volume is the first driving force driving the growth of CIS chips.
Although global smartphone shipments began to decline from 2018, the market size of CIS chips is still expanding, and the reason is the increase in the number of individual mobile phone cameras.
As mentioned earlier, the fundamental appeal of mobile phone cameras is the pursuit of clearer picture quality, and it is difficult to obtain high-quality photos on mobile phones with extremely limited sizes.
When a single camera has exhausted all its strength and still cannot satisfy consumers, then increasing the number of cameras is the best way, and the earliest proposed dual camera concept is the "black technology" brand HTC of that year.
The biggest difference between single and dual shots is the ability to zoom.
Different from the physical zoom that uses optical principles, digital zoom is mainly adjusted by software algorithms, and then calculated by interpolation, and the final image is often damaged and has more noise.
By using dual-camera technology, the difference in physical focal length of the two fixed-focus lenses is used to achieve a zoom effect, and then the noise and damage of the picture are reduced through the combination of the two calculations, thereby improving the clarity of the photo.
Theoretically, the greater the number of digital cameras, the sharper the photos taken by the mobile phone, so the switch from dual to multi-camera smartphone cameras may only be a matter of time.
It is for this reason that after the smartphone reaches the ceiling, the market size of mobile phone CIS chips is still growing. The decline in the market share of mobile phone CIS chips is not due to the shrinking of its own market size, but the growth rate has not been as fast as other tracks.
In addition to the security industry, where the penetration rate has increased significantly, the rise of new energy vehicles is also expected to drive CIS chips to usher in new growth. New energy vehicles are very similar to the original smart phones, which is a comprehensive and strong iteration of traditional products, so we believe that the demand for CIS chips for new energy vehicles is also likely to replicate the logic of smart phones.
That is, the logic of the double growth of new energy vehicle shipments and the number of cameras in a single car.
At present, the world's new energy vehicles are in an explosive period, the latest data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that China's new energy vehicle sales reached 3.521 million units, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, ranking first in the world for 7 consecutive years. This is only the epitome of the rise of global new energy vehicles, and the market unanimously expects that new energy vehicles are expected to continue the current growth in the next two years.
New energy vehicles are more digital than traditional fuel vehicles, so more machine vision and display technology equipment will be added. At a time when the smartphone market is gradually saturated, new energy vehicles are expected to become the most core growth point of CIS chips in the future.
In addition, as new energy vehicles gradually move towards intelligence, the demand for the number of cameras will also be more. For example, L1-level automatic driving only needs to be equipped with 1 camera; L2-level automatic driving needs to reach about 5 cameras, which is also the automatic driving level of most car companies at this stage; the demand for cameras for L5-level cars may increase to more than 20. This is like the transition of a smartphone from single to multi-camera.
If new energy vehicles eventually succeed smartphones as the core growth driver of CIS chips, then companies with deeper layouts in the automotive field may benefit from this.
3
A good opportunity for Chinese companies to rise
The demand for cameras in cars is very different from that of mobile phones, which may become a breakthrough in the rise of Chinese companies.
Compared with smartphones, in-car cameras do not pursue image quality too much, but are more focused on operational stability, frame rate and reliability. Many times, car cameras need to work in extreme environments such as high temperature and strong light, and the service life is significantly longer than that of smart phones, so safety and stability are the first issues that car CIS chip companies need to consider.
In the automotive CIS chip market, ON Semiconductor sits firmly in the absolute leader with a market share of 62%, and Howey Technology, which has an earlier layout of the car camera, can also obtain about 20% of the market share, while Sony and Samsung, the top two in the CIS chip market, have a very low market share in the automotive market.
If you look at the size of the entire CIS chip market, ON Semiconductor's market share may only be about 5%, and even the share of the smartphone market can be ignored, but this cannot prevent its success in the field of in-vehicle CIS chips. It can be seen that the experience accumulated on smartphones is almost not required in the field of car cameras.
In fact, the size of the car CIS chip can not be too small, because to ensure the stability of the sensor in extreme cases, and too much attention to pixels will be a large cost, the current car camera is almost 8 million pixels or less of the product.
But not paying attention to imaging does not mean that the on-board camera technology content is low, on the contrary, due to too extreme working conditions, but let its technical threshold is higher than the mobile phone CIS chip. A broken mobile phone camera may only affect the camera, while a broken car camera may cause an accident, which determines the difference in technical focus between the two sides.
The difference in technical requirements actually provides an opportunity for Chinese companies, in the pixel-pinned mobile phone market, including Howey acquired by Weier shares, it is actually difficult to completely confront Sony and Samsung, so the on-board CIS chip market with less high pixel requirements may be the breakthrough of Chinese companies.
The biggest opportunity among all Chinese companies is Vail Shares, which acquired Howey Technology in 2017, which was once the absolute giant of CIS chips, once sitting on more than half of the market share of the entire CIS market, stabilizing Sony and Samsung.
Howey's decline began with the iPhone 4S, when Howey lost the competition with Sony's Apple suppliers, and finally the iPhone 4S became popular, and Sony also used this to deeply bind with the iPhone, thus continuing to widen the gap between it and Howey.
Although in the high-pixel market, Howey is gradually suppressed by Sony and Samsung, in the security and automotive markets, Howey is still a competitive player. On the one hand, this benefits from the active layout of the automotive market in the early days, and on the other hand, it also lies in the value synergy of the company as a whole after the merger of Weir shares.
Howey Technology began to lay out the smart phone business as early as 2002, launched the first automotive HDR-SOC sensor in 2007, launched the CMOS image sensor in 2013, and has been iterating for 8 years, while Sony only began to enter the automotive market in 2016, and Samsung began to lay out in the past two years.
In the automotive chip market, which pays more attention to safety, there is no doubt that the first-mover advantage of Howey Technology is obvious.
On the other hand, With CIS chips as the core, Weier accelerates the layout of automotive simulation, RF and power chips, and initially forms a platform prototype of "display touch drive + fingerprint under the screen + peripheral simulation + RF + power". Especially after the smooth integration of Synopsys TDDI business and Gidith, the platform attributes of Weir shares have gradually become prominent.
Deepening the layout of automotive chips is actually The preparation of Weier shares for the upcoming automotive CIS era.
In addition to Weier shares, GekeWei, which was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in August last year, also began to lay out the automotive market.
Gekewei is a domestic enterprise that completely relies on independent research and development to achieve technological breakthroughs, the company's founder Zhao Lixin was born from the famous "Tsinghua EE85 class", and Weirong, the founder of Weier shares, and Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Changjiang Storage, are classmates.
Although in terms of market share, Geke Micro did not enter the top three, but according to Frost & Sullivan data, according to the caliber of shipments, Gerco Micro shipped 2.04 billion CIS chips in 2020, ranking first in the world.
Geke micro's products focus on the low-end market, so the market size is not as good as the leader of the high-end market, but if the company's transformation of automotive CIS is smooth, then the automotive CIS chip with low pixel requirements is expected to become a good choice for Geke micro, but everything is still in the early stage of development.
In terms of non-listed companies, Stawell is the world's first security CIS chip, and has begun to cut into the automotive CIS market three years ago and achieved phased results.
At the Shenzhen Security Exhibition, Ma Weijian, co-founder and COO of Steway, said that the company's automotive products have made a significant breakthrough in 2021, and 6 automotive chips have achieved tape-outs. In addition, the company's 8-megapixel ADAS product is also under development.
On April 28, Stevie launched a prospectus and will soon land on the Science and Technology Innovation Board.
New energy vehicles are like a gust of east wind, which is expected to drive the on-board CIS chip to become a new battlefield for industry players in the next decade, and Sony, which has less layout in the in-vehicle field, even personally made cars. This war is not only a subversion of the traditional CIS chip pattern, but also a good opportunity for China's CIS chip companies to break the situation.
Chinese companies that are eager to move will set off a monstrous wave of on-board CIS chips.
- END -
![The CIS market will reach $21.9 billion in 2022, and Samsung will further narrow the gap with Sony[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)