Domestic mobile phones may not all be made in China. You must look at the chip. If the core soul of the chip is domestically produced, it is 100% domestically produced. Because except for chips, it is neither necessary nor possible to import other components.
The most obvious feature of the mobile phone industry is the substantial improvement of product performance. The hardware arms competition continues to intensify. The continuously improving performance is mainly attributed to the core hardware supplier of mobile phones-SOC chip supplier. Mobile phone products, like PCs, mainly rely on chips to provide power.
Mobile phone products are a multi-faceted collection. Only when appearance design, workmanship quality, humanized UI, hardware performance, and price positioning are integrated into a relatively perfect balance point can they win the favor of the market. Hardware performance is the foundation for building skyscrapers, and among a large number of hardware, chips are the top priority. This part is also the one with the highest technical content and the greatest added value of products. The current mobile phone chip market is still in an era where all heroes are emerging. Almost any brand with some technical strength can participate in the research and development and production of chips. Unfortunately, domestic chips are at a low level.
Distribution ratio of Android device chip brands in 2013
After analyzing millions of mobile phone chip brands, it was found that the following rankings are: 1. Qualcomm (48.7) 2. Samsung (28.5), 3. NVIDIA (9.1), 4. MediaTek (7.8), 5. Huawei HiSilicon (2.8).
At present, in the field of mobile phones, there seems to have been an inherent mindset of using Qualcomm chips for the high-end and MediaTek chips for the mid-to-low-end. The former has many patented technologies and is currently the only one in the world that supports Apple, Google, and Microsoft. software platform mobile chip factory, and the latter rose to fame in the copycat mobile phone war. From the perspective of sales data, in the global IC design industry, Qualcomm, which ranked first in the United States, had sales of US$12.976 billion in 2012, MediaTek, which ranked first in Taiwan, had sales of US$3.395 billion, and Mainland China, which ranked first, had sales of US$3.395 billion. HiSilicon's sales were 7.45 billion yuan (approximately 1.192 billion U.S. dollars), only 9.2 of Qualcomm and 35.1 of MediaTek.
Chip manufacturing technology has high requirements on manufacturers’ hardware research and development capabilities. It is not a pure packaging solution. It can provide some differentiated functions in depth. General chip manufacturers cannot meet this requirement.
A person in charge of a Shenzhen mobile phone manufacturer told reporters that they mainly look at two points when choosing chips. One is technical support, which can help solve problems in time, and the other is quality and supply stability. . "Actually, as long as it runs smoothly technically, we will definitely choose it. But I haven't seen a domestic mobile phone chip manufacturer that is relatively stable, especially in the international market. Domestic chips still have a long way to go."
In fact, Chinese manufacturers first made mobile phone chips in the 1990s, such as Xohua Electronics' "Huaxia Chip". In the early 2000s, Haier, Hisense, Changhong and other manufacturers invested in making their own chips, but they all failed. end.
Pan Jiutang, an analyst at the Huaqiang Electronics Industry Research Institute, told reporters that on the one hand, international chip manufacturers have a long period of technology accumulation and reserves, strong R&D and financial strength, and can simultaneously develop a series of high, middle and low-end chips. chip. On the other hand, international chip manufacturers cater to global customers and have no worries about sales of high-end chips. "For a long time, domestic chip manufacturers mainly focused on the domestic market. Domestic mobile phone manufacturers used to produce mainly mid- to low-end products. Due to the weak strength of domestic chip manufacturers, the R&D team usually only had a few hundred or at most thousands of people, so they could only choose R&D. For a few products, based on reality, they will definitely choose mid-to-low-end chips that have a market."
The person in charge of a domestic chip manufacturer said frankly that the price of mobile terminals has dropped exponentially, and the chip industry must consider how to reduce it. cost. "SOC system integration is the key, and edge chip technologies need to be continuously integrated and digested. This can only be done by tough and ideal manufacturers. The development of mobile chips has surpassed Moore's Law, and SOC (system-on-chip) integration has raised the threshold. This has caused great difficulties for Chinese manufacturers.
"
Gu Wenjun believes that the current gap between domestic chip manufacturers and international manufacturers is mainly reflected in four aspects. "First, the gap in business models. There are many IDM companies in the United States, and South Korea has a start-to-finish industrial chain. , China is fighting independently without a clear model. The second is the gap between leading companies. TSMC’s annual sales are more than 10 billion US dollars, and even the top four companies in mainland China are not among them. In terms of design companies, Qualcomm has annual sales of more than 10 billion U.S. dollars, and Spreadtrum only had 700 million U.S. dollars last year, less than one-tenth of Qualcomm's. The third is the difference in production process and technology. The fourth is the capital gap. TSMC and Intel invest US$10 billion every year, while China only invests US$40-500 million. International manufacturers such as Qualcomm and Broadcom have grown bigger through mergers and acquisitions, while domestic manufacturers lack the corresponding capital. ”
If “originality” makes domestic chip manufacturers lose at the starting line, another more important reason is the high cost of catching up.
A related cost The figures are that from 65nm (nanometer) and 45nm to 22nm and 16nm, chip research and development costs are getting higher and higher. The 22nm process node is a production line that reaches breakeven. It is expected that the investment will be as high as 8 billion to 10 billion US dollars. The 16nm process The node may reach 12 billion to 15 billion US dollars. At present, almost only a few high-end chip design companies can afford this research and development cost, and for the fragmented Chinese chip manufacturing industry, this is almost an inescapable curse.
“China’s semiconductor industry is like the story of Sisyphus pushing the stone in ancient Greek mythology. In every new cycle of the semiconductor industry or in the development of every new era, we are emphasizing the importance of this industry. , it seems that the conclusion is: the domestic semiconductor industry has made significant progress in the past cycle, but the gap with the international market is widening. If it does not develop now, it will waste the last opportunity. So attention was paid to it and relevant policies were introduced. But after working hard for a few years, when the next cycle comes, it seems like we are back to the original starting point. "Gu Wenjun told reporters. ?
As the timeline shifts to the 4G era, the mobile phone chip market may face a new round of choices.
Gu Wenjun believes that from the terminal level, At present, there is a big gap between the technological maturity of domestic TD-LTE chips and international brands, mainly from a few manufacturers such as Huawei and Spreadtrum. Gu Wenjun said that in this field, domestic chips currently have little ability to compete with Qualcomm. Therefore, although Chinese manufacturers have. We have accumulated patents, intellectual property rights, and technical advantages in TD-SCDMA. However, since TD-LTE should be a multi-mode standard, and Chinese companies have almost no patents and technology accumulation in the WCDMA and LTE fields, this has led to the disadvantage of Chinese manufacturers in the competition. Development will be greatly restricted.
Pan Jiutang is more optimistic. He said that full-scale 4G mobile phone chips have been successfully developed, but there are only a few companies in the world, such as Qualcomm, HiSilicon and Marvell. International manufacturers such as Broadcom and Nvidia still need half a year to a year, which gives domestic chip manufacturers a certain opportunity.
"Currently, China's HiSilicon, Spreadtrum, Creation Video, Lianxin Technology, MediaTek and others. Manufacturers have already been involved in TD-LTE (4G) chip design and production. The large-scale commercial use of 4G mobile phones will not be until the second half of next year at the earliest. It is worth noting that Huawei HiSilicon is the only manufacturer other than Qualcomm that has mass-produced and shipped products. It has already been deployed in Japan, Europe, China, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and other countries around the world. Large-scale shipments in the market are considered by the industry to be "very valuable," Pan Jiutang said.
He Shiyou, executive vice president of ZTE, said in an interview with reporters that ZTE is currently making efforts in the field of mobile phone chips. "Mobile phone chips The layout needs to be prepared for a rainy day. If you cannot master the core technology and do not have a good business operation model, it will be difficult for your company to survive, so we will spend more energy on building 4G core technology. ”
The articles I cited are too many, which may seem troublesome to you, but this is also necessary to allow people to have a clearer and deeper understanding of the real answer behind your question. See here , you must have a very clear understanding of the final answer to this question.
As for how to support domestic production, you must have your own choice. Is it right?
(Postscript: After a lot of effort to answer so many detailed answers, you actually chose a satisfactory answer hastily, which is really disappointing...)