Core vs Kylin, Millet Huawei's chip battle

In the second half of the year, Millet was clearly aware of its own in the ecological system of the short plate, began to wantonly upstream and downstream expansion. In terms of content, will Sina original editor-in-chief Chen, investment video site to make up the content of short board. Also, the hand extends to the cell phone's heart-chip field.

November 6, Datang Telecom issued a major contract announcement that the company's wholly-owned subsidiary of the Core Technology Co., Ltd. and Beijing Pine Cone Electronics Co., Ltd. signed the "SDR1860 Platform technology transfer contract", The core technology developed and owned by the SDR1860 platform technology to 103 million yuan price, license authorized to Beijing Pine Cone Electronics Co. At the same time, the core technology and Beijing Pine Cone Electronics Co., Ltd. signed the "Strategic Cooperation Agreement", the two sides are committed to the 4G Multimode SOC serialization chip product design and development.

Beijing Pine Cone Electronics Co., Ltd. is the core technology, millet joint venture, has been registered October 16 this year, Millet Holdings 51%, Core Technology Holdings 49%. This means that millet through a joint venture with the core technology form, into the mobile phone chip field.

The move seems to be a win, for Millet, because there is no chip, in the supply chain controlled, in the mobile phone research and development is also quite constrained, through joint ventures to test the water chip, can realize the purpose of the Pathfinder, but also to solve the many problems mentioned above. For the core technology, alongside millet such a large number of mobile phone sales, but also for their own chip sales found a way out.

Almost at the same time, December 3, Huawei issued a 620 chip code-named Kirin, the glory of playing 4X mobile and Unicom version will chip from the Gaotong Dragon 410 chip replacement for Kirin 620. Huawei, which has emerged as the strongest competitor of millet this year, is taking advantage of Huawei's sea-thinking chips to build deeper technological hurdles.

Millet and Glory, PK field also from the surface of product performance, price and marketing, to the deeper chip expansion, a joint venture with the core technology chip, one is in the mobile phone chip field for many years, which is more promising?

Millet and the combination of core technology to make chips, seemingly a shortcut, but there are many worries. First of all, the core technology is Datang Telecom's company, Datang Telecom is the communications industry veteran state-owned enterprises, with strong traditional thinking. Millet is a downright internet company, the two in the concept, practice, style, rhythm has a lot of contradictions, conflict inevitable.

For example, Lei's current core strategy is to occupy the mass market with low-cost handsets such as red rice, which previously openly called for "the chip industry should use the Internet for free, at cost price," he said. "Why must we sell thirty or forty dollars, not three or four dollars?" If the chip is free, the millet high-end mobile phone only needs 500 yuan. Such a view makes the traditional chip maker such as core technology must be mixed.

Second, from the performance comparison, the millet chip and Huawei's chip is not the same, this will show on the mobile phone performance gap. Millet's strategy is clear, that is, at the price of 699 yuan, 799 yuan of red rice tasted sweetness, to use the core 1860 chip to the lower end of the 399 yuan, 499 yuan mobile phone market launched a shock. From the chip comparison, the core from the beginning is in the low-end chip market, but Huawei's Kirin chip from the beginning is positioned in the high-end field, Kirin 910, Kirin 920, Kirin 925 chip to protect the Huawei P7, Glory 6, Mate7 in high-end mobile phone market success. When Huawei expands from high-end to low-end chips, it will have both high-end performance, low prices, and more formidable competitiveness. In other words, Huawei is using high-performance low price Kirin 620 chips against the low performance of millet low price of the core 1860, the outcome can be seen.

Let us compare a core 1860 and Kirin 620 see very clearly, core 1860 using 28 nm process, four arm A7 core, GPU with dual-core Mali T628. Kirin 620, the same use of 28 nm process, but there are eight arm A53 core, but also 64-bit system. From the performance comparison, A53 than A7 performance of the same frequency increase 40%, under A53 architecture, 64-bit software performance than 32-bit software improved average of 25%.

With 620 of the glory of the Unicorn play 4X mobile phone also naturally has more outstanding performance, such as its communication signal can hold live 4G connection, will not fall to 3G, with a higher 4G network ratio; Because Kirin 620 can be similar to auto block, according to the application scene automatic Diaodang FM, Balance between high performance and low power consumption, so let the Glory play 4X mobile phone has high performance and can achieve low power consumption.

Third, the joint venture with the core technology can not solve the patent problem of millet. For Millet, recently because the patent dispute has just been banned by the Indian market, highlighting the patent dilemma. With the combination of core technology, can alleviate its patent problems, but can not fundamentally solve. The advantages of the core technology in TD-SCDMA, there are many patents, but in WCDMA, CDMA is relatively weak, if millet to enter the international market, the patent of this karez is difficult to short time. By contrast, traditional handset makers such as Huawei and ZTE do not have such problems because of long-term communication technology accumulation and overseas market development experience.

In addition, millet and the joint core technology, is still two companies, it is difficult to ensure a concerted. For example, the recent spread of millet money from the core dug people's news, Millet is just take the core as a springboard, eventually or make their own chips? For the core, the millet can solve many of their own problems, but because the core and millet so close, other mobile phone manufacturers may have a grudge, at a respectful distance, so overall may affect the core and other mobile phone manufacturers of cooperation.

In short, millet and core joint venture to do chip direction is right, but compared to Huawei so deep chip manufacturers for many years, the gap is still very obvious. When Huawei production of Kirin 620 such high-performance, low-cost chips, and Kirin 620 with the glory of playing products bundled, a battle in the Millennium Smart Machine market will inevitably be crowned.