The 5G industry is a landmark achievement of China's high-tech development in recent decades, and Huawei is one of the leaders. As the world's largest economy, the United States does not allow China to challenge its scientific and technological hegemony, so the United States has spared no effort to suppress China's 5G industry in recent years.
The United States' means are very vicious, it not only includes Huawei in the entity list, prohibits American companies from supplying 5G components to Huawei, but also forcibly modifies the chip rules, resulting in TSMC, Samsung and other chip foundries can not OEM Kirin chips for Huawei.
The United States also pressured the Netherlands, Japan and other countries to forcibly cut off China's import of EUV lithography machines, and Huawei fell into the dilemma of no cores available.
Affected by this, Huawei's mobile phone business has been greatly damaged. Losing the trump card of the Kirin chip, Huawei can only find Qualcomm to order 4G chips, and the 5G mobile phones of friends have already blossomed everywhere. Huawei's annual shipments of mobile phones have plummeted from 240 million at their peak to 30 million today.
Despite the unprecedented suppression, Huawei has not yielded, but continues to invest hundreds of billions of research and development funds every year, and work together with the domestic supply chain to break through the neck technology of chip manufacturing.
Recently, it was reported that Huawei's consumer business, which only offers 4G phones, will change in the second half of this year, and the company is preparing to return to the 5G market with upcoming smartphones.
After several years of lying down and tasting, Huawei has accumulated a large number of chip technologies, and Huawei currently has the technology and ability to use its own chip design tools, and mass produce 5G chips through international cooperation with SMIC, a foundry enterprise of Kirin chips. Several research institutions have pointed out that Huawei may produce a 5G version of flagship models such as the P60 this year and bring it to market in early 2024.
Some research institutions predict that Huawei will use SMIC's N+1 manufacturing process, which is roughly equivalent to TSMC's 7nm process. SMIC has a DUV lithography machine, and 7nm is exactly the limit of DUV lithography machine.
However, SMIC's N+1 manufacturing process can predict the yield of chips below 50%, so Huawei's shipments of 5G mobile phones in the second half of the year are likely to be limited to about 2 million to 4 million units.
Some time ago, Huawei conquered electronic design automation (EDA) tools for process chips of 14nm and above, so SMIC will be able to use EDA software to make blueprints for 5G chips before mass production.
An announcement issued by Beijing Sai Microelectronics also seems to confirm that Huawei will return to the 5G mobile phone market. The announcement said that Cymicro's BAW filter has completed small-batch trial production and signed a long-term purchase agreement with "a customer". Obviously, "a customer" here refers to Huawei.
BAW filter Chinese full name "acoustic wave filter with resonant cavity", the device is an indispensable filter for 5G RF front-end, and the reason why Huawei cannot use 5G is because BAW filter is monopolized by Broadcom and Qorvo in the United States, which occupy more than 95% of the global BAW filter market share.
The self-developed BAW filter is extremely difficult, and it is easy to touch the patent wall of Broadcom and Qorvo, and it is very difficult to break through the US 5G blockade in a short period of time. The mass production of domestic BAW filters marks that Continental has achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1 in this field.
Objectively speaking, although Huawei's first returned Kirin chip is probably only equivalent to the low-end chips of other manufacturers in terms of performance, fortunately, domestic consumers are very recognized by the Huawei brand, and Chinese people are very eager for Huawei to return to the 5G mobile phone market.
If Huawei can really release 5G smartphones in the second half of the year, we believe that many consumers will be willing to pay for Huawei by then, and may even set off a rush to buy.
Foreign media analysis, once Huawei's 7nm Kirin Core + 5G returns, then Huawei's consumer business can stabilize the basic market, and it is very likely to "recover lost ground" and regain lost market share, and the Huawei "farce" led by the United States will also be over.
Huawei has overcome many difficulties to break through the blockade and get domestic 5G chips, and the most affected may be the semiconductor companies in the United States. U.S. semiconductor companies are highly dependent on the Chinese market, with 63% of Qualcomm's revenue coming from China and 35% of Broadcom's revenue coming from China. Once these American companies lose the Chinese market, they will lose a lot of operating income.