It's not just apples. In the past ten years, many mobile phone chip manufacturers have left one after another because of the failure of baseband technology. Qualcomm baseband has become a hurdle for mobile phone chips.
However, under the pressure of Qualcomm, Huawei gained the autonomy of communication baseband.
Everyone has always said that chips burn money. Since everyone is burning money, why doesn't Apple make baseband chips and Huawei does?
Simply put, besides money, there are patents and time.
Not enough money for successful research and development, but also enough patents to make a company invincible in a longer period of time; Starting earlier can usher in more time to develop technology and accumulate patents. Nokia and Qualcomm are living examples.
The other is the right time, the right place and the right people, and the opportunity of the times, which is the inevitable fate of all technology companies.
How did Huawei do it step by step?
From switch dealers to chip manufacturers
Huawei was founded in 1984, which is similar to the time when Qualcomm was founded in 1985, but its development process is completely different.
Qualcomm is an orthodox communication company. 1988 merged with Omninet, and its revenue reached $32 million the following year. Huawei is a typical China startup from scratch. When Ren co-founded Huawei, the registered capital was only 2 10000 yuan and there were 14 employees.
Although Huawei was famous as a technology company in its early years, it was actually a "second-hand dealer" selling switches. It was not until around 1990 that Huawei began to develop its own switches and finally got on the road in the technology industry.
Switches are the infrastructure of communication, and chips account for the highest cost. In order to seize the "lifeline" of the chip, Huawei set up an integrated circuit company in 199 1 and began to develop its own switch chip. Ren Zheng Fei recruited some domestic technical elites, including Xu Wenwei, the founder of Huawei chips who is proficient in circuit design and assembly language, and led the chip design of Huawei.
As we all know, the cost of chip research and development is quite high. At that time, Huawei's funds were very tight, and Ren even borrowed usury to maintain operations.
Fortunately, Huawei's first ASIC chip was successfully streamed. 1993, Huawei's first self-developed switch chip SD509 came out.
Although the function is relatively backward, at least it has made a good start. In the following decade, Huawei gradually developed stronger chips.
Until nobody cares about K3.
Huawei's self-developed baseband chip began in 2006, which is both a rainy day and a coincidence.
In 2004, Haisi, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huawei, was established. Initial products include SIM card, set-top box chip, video codec chip, security monitoring chip, etc.
In particular, the research and development of video chips has accumulated experience for Huawei application processors.
Baseband chips that are crucial to mobile phones are due to the rift between Huawei and Qualcomm. One of Huawei's main products at that time was 3G data card, also called 3G network card, which was necessary for business travelers. Because of supply reasons, the baseband chip of Huawei 3G data card is often stuck by Qualcomm, so we decided to develop our own data card chip.
In 2009, Huawei released the first mobile phone application chip K3V1(Hi3611). The baseband part originates from its own GSM base station technology and is integrated with EDGE modem, which is called "2.5G". Hayes K3V 1 Take the MediaTek route, starting with the entry machine and the cottage machine.
Unfortunately, K3V 1, which aims at the low-end market, is inferior to MediaTek and Spreadtrum, which have mature solutions, and its product competitiveness is not strong. In addition, Huawei is not optimistic internally. In the end, only a few mobile phones are equipped with K3V 1, such as the Huawei C8300 equipped with Windows Mobile.
Fortunately, Huawei did not surrender because of this blow.
Finally, with continuous efforts, Ba Long's 4G was successfully developed.
To be a low-end cottage hurts brand tonality, Huawei has a longer-term goal of being a high-end and a high-end smartphone. It coincides with the rise of Android, 3G and 4G alternate, now or never.
Huawei's first Android phone U8220, customized T-Mobile.
In 2009, Hisilicon finally made a major breakthrough in baseband chips, and launched the industry's first multi-mode terminal chip Balong 700, named after Balong Snow Mountain. The chip was exhibited at the Shanghai World Expo in 20 10, and then entered the commercial field.
Balong 7 10 was released in 20 12, which is the first multi-mode LTE terminal chip supporting LTE Cat.4 in the industry, with a speed of 150Mbps, and was integrated into Kirin 9 10 SoC for the first time. This makes Kirin 9 10 a real mobile phone SoC. At that time, few manufacturers were able to integrate baseband.
The following year, Ba Long 720 was released and integrated into Kirin 920 SoC. Balong 720 is the world's first integrated baseband supporting LTE Cat.6 standard, surpassing the industry-leading Qualcomm, and its downlink rate can reach 300Mbps.
Ba Long 750 and 765 followed closely, supporting LTE Cat. 12/ 13 UL, with a peak download rate of 600Mbps；; Balong 765, the first to support 8×8MIMO and LTE Cat. 19, with a peak rate of 1.6Gbps, is the first TD-LTE Gbit scheme in the world and is still in the leading position.
Balong 765, integrated in Kirin 980 SoC, made its debut in Huawei Mate 20 series in 20 18, helping Huawei to enter the high-end mobile phone field and compete with rival Apple Samsung.
At this time, the smart phone has reached the era of 4G and 5G alternation. Because there is no breakthrough in communication baseband, Texas Instruments and NVIDIA quit the mobile phone processor industry. Apple was involved in a patent lawsuit with Qualcomm. The Intel baseband signal in the iPhone is poor, and 5G has repeatedly skipped the ticket. MediaTek is still mired in low-end mobile phones.
Huawei's insistence made it the first to get a 5G ticket.
In the end, Huawei stood at the forefront of technology with 5 G.
The release of 20 19 Kirin 990 5G chip not only adopted the brand-new TSMC 7nm EUV process for the first time, but also integrated the Ba Long 5000 5G baseband for the first time. The network speed of 5G sub-6GHz band can reach 4.6Gbps, and the millimeter wave 5G band can reach 6.5Gbps, which is the first to support SA and NSA synchronous networking.
Of course, it is the first time to integrate 5G baseband on the flagship SoC. Compared with the "plug-in" type of other chips, the balance between power consumption and performance is realized. It was not until Snapdragon 888 at the end of 2020 that Qualcomm did this for the first time.
The combination of Kirin 990 and Ba Long 5000 5G created a myth for Huawei Mate 30 series. After 60 days on the market, the sales volume exceeded 7 million units, and it was sold for 6,543.8+0.2 million units in three months, which is the undoubted peak performance of domestic high-end mobile phones.
After the peak of debut, the US overbearing ban made Huawei's 5G road turn sharply.
TSMC, Huawei's long-term partner and the world's largest foundry, has been unable to OEM chips for Huawei since September 2020. Kirin 9000 series and Baron 5005G have become swan songs.