At first, it was a CD-ROM chip (10 years ago, it was a standard accessory for computers). By integrating the three chips in the CD into one chip, the price has been reduced, and Japanese and American companies are everywhere. Soon, the market share exceeded 50%, and I became an industry champion.
After digging the first bucket of gold on the CD-ROM chip, Cai Mingjie took a fancy to the mobile phone chip. Mobile phone chips look more difficult to chew than CD chips. This land is the backyard of European and American enterprises. TI, Infineon and other companies have more than 50% of the global market share, and have a good relationship with Nokia, the first mobile phone at that time. MediaTek didn't.
However, it will be good for Cai Mingjie to come, but frontal attack will not work (first-line mobile phone manufacturers love to ignore it), so let's have a "rural encircling the city". When MediaTek went to the mainland, he found that many manufacturers of white-label machines (commonly known as shanzhai machines) in Shenzhen were hungry and could not afford to climb the big companies such as Texas Instruments, Infineon and Qualcomm. As a result, Cai Mingjie brought a wave of subversive innovation, integrated the complex mobile phone system, and helped small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers in Shenzhen to lower the entry threshold for mobile phones.
This scheme is the "turnkey" scheme that defeated Qualcomm later. To put it bluntly, MediaTek fixed the hardware and software systems of mobile phones, allowing small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers to launch new mobile phones with a slight increase in functional modules, thus eliminating the R&D center invested by large enterprises. For example, if you buy a well-decorated house and get the key, you can move in. In this way, MediaTek has created a brand-new business model, which is equivalent to getting the key to new wealth.
At first, the tycoons thought MediaTek's business was too low-end and didn't look at it at all. But no one can imagine that the cottage mobile phone market is getting bigger every year, and even sold to emerging markets such as the Middle East, Africa, India and Indonesia. At the peak, 300 million to 500 million cottage phones can be sold every year. Moreover, shanzhai has become a cultural phenomenon. More importantly, such a big piece of cake was eaten by Cai Mingjie-MediaTek occupied more than 90% of the cottage and became the real king of the 2G era ("the king of the cottage").
After MediaTek was in deep crisis, retired Cai Mingjie had to go out again. At that time, MediaTek was so successful that he not only wanted Huawei to learn from MediaTek, but also designed and manufactured a chip specially made for the cottage, ready to make a fortune while the iron was hot. Now, Xu Zhijun, the rotating chairman of Huawei Group, also goes to Huaqiang North to sell chips. However, the chip K3V 1 finally failed.
When Xu Zhijun, the rotating chairman of Huawei, was young, who would have thought of selling K3V 1 chips? Fortunately, K3V 1 failed, otherwise there would be no later Kirin chip. In addition, Lu, president of Gionee and now vice president of Xiaomi, is a loyal fan of MediaTek. When MediaTek dragged his feet into the smart phone market, he was anxious: Fage, push the 4-core chip!
Lu joined Xiaomi and is a loyal fan. Few people know that in Li Jing's days, he was a big fan of MediaTek. However, at 20 10, when the whole mobile phone industry switched from 2G to 3G, MediaTek fell behind and was beaten to 5G by Qualcomm, but he failed to stand up completely.
Limited to space, I won't expand here. I just briefly talk about the reasons why MediaTek lost: Hayes didn't grab MediaTek's cake, but Spreadtrum and Morningstar held MediaTek back in the low-end market and delayed its entry into 3G; In view of MediaTek's "turn-key" scheme, Qualcomm dealt with a man as he deals with you, launched the QRD platform, and won a large number of manufacturers in the 3G era. MediaTek was locked up and could not resist; Qualcomm is the owner of the CDMA standard.
CDMA is a 3G standard, which means that Qualcomm has mastered the 3G standard and established a complete patent layout. Even if MediaTek succeeds in developing 3G baseband as scheduled, it will not bypass Qualcomm's patent wall, and it must pay 6% of the patent licensing fee, which means that MediaTek's future is locked by Qualcomm. In a word, the past of MediaTek, the "king of shanzhai", can be summarized in one sentence: he started from a humble CD-ROM chip, made his fortune in the shanzhai business that no one was optimistic about, lost in the 3G era, struggled in 4G and struggled in 5G. There is still a road ahead, and the turning point is not far away.