Home » Mobile phone SoC changes: HiSilicon drops, Ziguang Zhanrui soars 63 times, and MediaTek becomes the biggest winner-Hardware

Mobile phone SoC changes: HiSilicon drops, Ziguang Zhanrui soars 63 times, and MediaTek becomes the biggest winner-Hardware

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In the “China Mobile Communication Industry Data Observation Report” released by CINNO Research, Ziguang Zhanrui became the biggest dark horse, ranking among the top five with 800,000 mobile phone chip shipments in the month, a year-on-year increase of 6346.2%. It is worth mentioning that this is also the first time it has entered the top five list, with MediaTek, Qualcomm, Apple, and Huawei HiSilicon in front.

In contrast, Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin chip shipments have fallen sharply, down 76% year-on-year, and the ranking has fallen from the third place in the same period last year to the fourth place; to some extent, this is reserved for other chip manufacturers. Market space.

Increased by 63 times, Ziguang Zhanrui showed its talents

From the perspective of mobile phone chip shipments in May, Unigroup Zhanrui is undoubtedly the biggest winner, not only soaring 63 times, but its shipment of 800,000 chips is the highest level.

Regarding the reason for the surge in sales,Liu Yushi, a senior analyst at CINNO Reseaech, told Lei Feng.com that Ziguang Zhanrui has seized the market opportunity of 5G sinking into the low-end market and urgently needs high-cost SoC solutions to occupy a place.

Lei Feng.com has previously published an article (“Unisex Zhanrui is reborn at the age of 20, forming a Tanggula 5G team”) that Ziguang Zhanrui has been making business adjustments since 2018, seizing 5G development opportunities, and incorporating independent development of 5G technology into the Unisex Exhibition Rui’s development goals.

After two years of research and development efforts, its first 5G chip T7510 was officially put into commercial mass production-Leifeng.com learned that the sales of T7510 5G chipset broke one million sets in half a year, and the number of commercial terminal products has exceeded 50 models.

Afterwards, Ziguang Zhan relied on the victory and pursued it, not only passed a series of tests to verify the T7520 at the fastest speed in history, but also formed the Tangula 5G team and released the latest 5G brand Tangula.

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Not only that, after a series of adjustments, Ziguang Zhanrui also independently developed the Ivy series of 5G modems and became one of only five 5G modem providers in the world. The other four are Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, and HiSilicon.

Unlike other manufacturers that can launch 5G chips, Ziguang Zhanrui chips mainly target the low-end market and give full play to their cost-effective advantages.

“Tsinghua Unigroup has been focusing on the low-end market for a long time, and has a deeper understanding of cost and performance balance”,Liu Yushi said.

According to Leifeng.com, after the reform of Unigroup Zhanrui, in addition to Hisense, China Telecom, AGM, etc., its mobile phone manufacturers have also entered mainstream camps such as Honor, ZTE, Motorola, and Xiaomi. For example, the recently released Honor Play 20 and Honor Play 5T are all equipped with Ziguang Zhanrui mobile phone chips.

Liu Yushi told Leifeng.com that the cooperation between Honor and other mobile phone manufacturers and Unigroup Zhanrui is actually based on supply chain management and considerations of dealing with unstable international market environments.

“Under the current international market environment, it is natural to seek to establish a more diverse and stable supply chain. In the future, other mobile phone manufacturers may also incorporate Unigroup Zhanrui’s 5G chips into their supply chains.”

Liu Yushi said.

Huawei HiSilicon’s dilemma is difficult to solve

Ziguang Zhanrui’s soaring results have given people another glimpse of the development of domestic chips, while another domestic chip manufacturer, HiSilicon, is not so happy.

Due to the impact of the US ban, HiSilicon’s 5G chip foundry is still blocked. According to the report, HiSilicon shipped only 2.4 million mobile phone chips in May, down 76% year-on-year, ranking fourth.

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And just last year, Huawei HiSilicon mobile phone chips were still at the top of the list. According to the monthly semiconductor industry report released by CINNO Research at the end of April 2020, Huawei HiSilicon surpassed Qualcomm for the first time with a 43.9% share of the Chinese smartphone processor market. At the top of the list.

It now appears that the highlight moment of Huawei HiSilicon is fleeting.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that although SMIC recently stated that it still has cooperation with HiSilicon, it should be noted that SMIC’s current chip foundry capabilities are mainly manifested in the 14nm process and above, and there is still a relationship with TSMC and Samsung. Larger gaps, such as the Kirin 9000 of 5nm process, cannot be produced temporarily.

Therefore, the cooperation between Huawei HiSilicon and SMIC should be mainly on chips in other fields, such as security series AI chips that require less technology.

It is not difficult to see that the dilemma of HiSilicon chips is still unsolved.

The adverse reaction of HiSilicon’s mobile phone chips being blocked is directly reflected in the sales of Huawei’s smartphones. Market research agency Canalys 2021 Q1 China survey report shows that Huawei’s mobile phone shipments were only about 14.9 million units, a year-on-year decline of up to 50%, and the market accounted for 16%, which was lower than OPPO and vivo.

Although Huawei re-listed the Mate 40 Pro, Mate 40E and Nova 8 Pro three “new phones” in June of this year, they are all equipped with the 4G version of the HiSilicon Kirin 9000, and the market competitiveness is obvious. As for the planned release of the Huawei P50 series, it is not yet known when it will be released.

It is self-evident that HiSilicon’s frustration in chip foundry has had a negative impact on the product business, but Huawei has not given up on continuing its research on chips.

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On June 14, according to the Nikkei Asian Review, Huawei’s director Chen Lifang stated that Huawei is still developing cutting-edge semiconductor components internally, and HiSilicon will not make any restructuring or layoff decisions.

Not only that, Huawei HiSilicon has also shown that it wants to continue its expansion. According to foreign media, Huawei is hiring chip engineers in Munich.

Concluding remarks

On the whole, the global market pattern of SoC processors for smartphones has been extremely stable, and unless it is a super variable such as Huawei being sanctioned by the United States, this pattern is difficult to break.

At present, the mainstream mobile phone processor brands recognized globally are mainly Qualcomm Snapdragon series, Apple A series, Samsung Orion series, Huawei HiSilicon Kirin series and MediaTek Dimensity series. In recent years, MediaTek’s momentum has been relatively strong.

However, Liu Yushi told Leifeng.com that although MediaTek has achieved the title of chip market champion in many reports, Qualcomm has cooperated with major brands and developers for many years and has a relatively strong voice in the supply chain. This aspect will take time.

MediaTek is still the case. Ziguang Zhanrui, who has just entered the top five array and has not broken one million, still has a long way to go. After all, in the field of mobile phone chips, what can convince consumers is never the millions of shipments, but the technical content of the chip and the real use value it brings.

Of course, this achievement, for Ziguang Zhanrui, is the result of its silent hard work in the SoC field and never give up. It is worthy of encouragement-but it may take more time if it is to be recognized by more manufacturers.

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