In this information age, mobile phones have become a communication and Internet access tool that modern people cannot leave without. One of the core components of a mobile phone is the chip, which is like the "brain" of a mobile phone, which determines the performance and power consumption of the mobile phone.
However, in recent years, the international mobile phone chip market has been monopolized by several foreign companies, and their continuous price increases have brought heavy pressure to domestic mobile phone manufacturers. In the face of this dilemma, the Chinese government and enterprises have begun to increase the independent research and development of chips, and the domestic mobile phone chip industry chain is accelerating.
We all know that Qualcomm and MediaTek, the two chip giants, have long occupied half of the global mobile phone chip market. With advanced technology and a large amount of R&D investment, they have produced flagship chips and low-end chip products with strong performance. Due to their absolute dominance in the market, the two companies have been increasing the price of chips in recent years.
For domestic mobile phone manufacturers, this is undoubtedly a heavy burden. Due to the lack of autonomous and controllable chip technology, they have no choice but to passively accept high-priced chips. This has greatly increased the production cost of mobile phones, affected the profit margins of products, and also allowed consumers to buy relatively expensive domestic mobile phones.
In the face of difficulties, the Chinese government attaches great importance to the independent development of the chip industry. From the proposal of the national strategy of "China Chip" to "Twin Core" to "Computing Power", the government has been making every effort to support the development and growth of domestic chip companies. At the same time, a number of domestic chip companies are also increasing R&D investment, such as Huawei's HiSilicon, Xiaomi's Suli, MediaTek, Unisplendour, etc., and their chip products are gradually catching up with international giants.
Xiaomi's mobile phone chip "Dimensity" series is one of the best among them. From the low-end to the flagship, Dimensity chips have been able to cover the needs of mainstream mobile phone models. The Dimensity 8200, launched this year, is Xiaomi's first flagship 5nm chip, which not only performs well in power consumption, but also has outstanding performance in artificial intelligence and graphics processing capabilities. This means that consumers will be able to buy domestic chip mobile phones with outstanding experience and affordable prices in the future.
At present, the global mobile phone chip market presents a highly concentrated pattern, with leading companies accounting for the vast majority of the market share. According to the statistics of third-party research institutions, the top five chip suppliers are MediaTek, Qualcomm, Apple, UNISOC and Samsung.
Among them, MediaTek and Qualcomm, the "chip duo", together occupy nearly 60% of the market share, which can be said to be far ahead. The two companies have advantages in the field of mid-to-high-end and entry-level mobile phone chips, respectively, and comprehensively cover the mobile phone market at different price points.
Headquartered in Taiwan, MediaTek is the world's fourth-largest fabless chip designer, focusing on the low-end mobile phone chip market. With its excellent price-performance ratio, it is very popular in emerging markets such as India and Southeast Asia. In China, MediaTek chips are also widely used in thousand-yuan models of brands such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo.
Qualcomm, as an American chip giant, occupies an absolute dominant position in the field of mid-to-high-end flagship chips. Due to its top-notch R&D capabilities, Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile platform has been at the forefront of the industry. In addition to Apple's own chips, most of the flagship models of the Android camp use Qualcomm processors.
As an "upstart" in the mobile phone chip market, Apple's own chips have outstanding performance in performance and power consumption control, making the iPhone series of mobile phones have maintained strong competitiveness. At the same time, Apple silicon also has the advantage of deep integration with the iOS system.
Although the market share of China's local enterprise UNISOC is not as large as the first three, it plays an important role in the domestic mobile phone chip market by virtue of its independent and controllable advantages, providing a reliable chip supply for domestic mobile phone manufacturers.
As a South Korean technology giant, Samsung's Exynos series chips are mainly used in its own Galaxy flagship models, and its performance in the export market is average.
Due to years of technology accumulation and market monopoly, Qualcomm and MediaTek are in an absolutely dominant position in the field of mobile phone chips. Data shows that Qualcomm's net profit margin has remained above 20% in the past five years, and MediaTek's net profit margin has also exceeded 17%. Such high profit margins are undoubtedly based on the harvest of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.
Faced with the pressure of international giants, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are forced to independently develop chips in order to get rid of the fate of being harvested. In this process, Huawei's mobile phone chip subsidiary, HiSilicon, came into being, which has become the hope for the development of domestic mobile phone chips.
Leveraging Huawei's decades of technology accumulation in the communications field, HiSilicon has unique advantages in chip design and manufacturing. In recent years, HiSilicon has continuously launched high-performance chip products, which have reached the international advanced level in many fields such as power consumption, heat dissipation, and 5G communication, and have become the first choice of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.
If the chip manufacturing problem is completely solved, HiSilicon is fully expected to surpass Qualcomm and become another mobile phone chip giant in the world. At that time, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers will completely get rid of the fate of being harvested and occupy a greater voice in the international market.
The development of domestic mobile phone chips still has a long way to go and requires the joint efforts of the whole society. However, as long as we maintain our determination and independent innovation, I believe that in the near future, Chinese chips will be able to rise in the center of the world stage and inject new impetus into the mainland's scientific and technological strength.