China empty "core" of the worry: a year of import chip value of Super oil

Once there was such a joke: Apple a "hungry", other mobile phone brands will starve, said that because of the limited supply of high-end chips, in the chip manufacturers choose customers, domestic handset manufacturers can only "a moment".

Now, although the Apple has gone down the altar, but the distorted business environment reflects the lack of much improvement, "one core difficult" situation is still plagued by the desire to take the high-end line of terminal handset manufacturers.

"China's imports of integrated circuit chips in 2012 were $192 billion trillion, a figure more than $120 billion trillion in imported oil," he said. "Isuppli Semiconductor chief analyst Wenjun to the" First financial daily "reporter said that high-end chip is the most scarce, its development process needs a strong research and development base, capital investment and years of accumulation, and Chinese manufacturers in these areas are still relatively weak.

China is still a net importer of technology and intellectual property, with a high reliance on key core technologies and 80% of chips to import, according to the "Yellow Book of 20 countries ' national Innovative competitiveness" issued by the Development Research Center of the State Council. The data show that China made 1.18 billion mobile phones a year, 350 million computers, 130 million TV sets, are the world's first, but embedded in the high-end chip patent costs but let everyone become international manufacturers of migrant workers.

Domestic chip manufacturers frustrated

At present, in the mobile phone field, it seems to have formed a high-end with Qualcomm, the low-end use of MediaTek chip's inherent thinking, the former has a number of patented technology, is currently the only support for Apple, Google, Microsoft's three software platforms of mobile chip factory, while the latter is in the Shanzhai phone war reputation. And from the sales data, in the global IC design industry, the United States ranked first in 2012 Qualcomm sales of 12.976 billion U.S. dollars, China's Taiwan region, the number one of MediaTek sales of 3.395 billion U.S. dollars, and the mainland China's first-ranked SI semiconductor sales of 7.45 billion yuan (about 1.192 billion U.S. dollars ), only 9.2% of Qualcomm, 35.1% of MediaTek.

"We are mainly around the CDMA in China Telecom, Qualcomm is the leader in this field." Xu Guoxiang, chairman of the mobile phone company, told reporters that Qualcomm's platform is Multimode multi-frequency, to support the network of different operators, based on Qualcomm Platform development, they do not have to do different products for various carriers. More importantly, working with Qualcomm means that, to a certain extent, manufacturers already have one foot that has stepped into the high end.

"Its technology to the manufacturers of hardware research and development capabilities, is not a pure packaging program, can do some of the differential function, the general chip manufacturers do not meet this requirement." Xu told reporters, what chip in a sense also represents the strength of the handset manufacturer.

It should be said that this is the majority of mobile phone manufacturers in the face of high-end chip selection mentality.

China Mobile recently in the latest issue of LTE (4G) tender, domestic chip manufacturers once again collective frustrated. End of the bidding results show that the use of Qualcomm Chip won the final products accounted for more than half of the domestic chip manufacturers only Huawei Heiss bid.

A Shenzhen mobile phone manufacturer in charge to reporters that their choice of chips mainly to see two points, one is technical support, problems can be resolved in a timely manner, the second is the quality and supply stability. "In fact, as long as the technical run smoothly, we definitely choose." But more stable domestic mobile phone chip dealers I have not seen, especially in the international market, domestic chip has a long way to go. ”

In fact, the Chinese manufacturers in the early 90 's had done mobile phone chips, such as Xiamen-China Electronics "Huaxia Core", the early 2000 Haier, Hisense, Changhong and other manufacturers to invest their own, but failed to end.

Huaqiang Electronics Industry Research Institute analyst Pan to reporters, on the one hand, the international chip dealers have a long time of technology accumulation and reserves, strong research and development and financial strength, can simultaneously develop a series of low-order chip. On the other hand, international chip manufacturers face global customers, high-end chips do not worry about sales. "For a long time, domestic chip manufacturers mainly for domestic, domestic handset manufacturers before the main products are low, because the domestic chip manufacturers weak, research and development team is generally hundreds of, up to thousands of people, so only can choose to research and development of a few products, based on the reality, they will certainly choose to have the market medium and low order chip. ”

The head of a domestic chip manufacturer admits that the price of mobile terminals has doubled, and the chip industry must consider how to reduce costs. "Soc integration is the key to the need to integrate the edge of the chip technology to continue to digest, and this only tough and ideal manufacturers to do, mobile chip development than Moore's Law, SOC (System-level chip) integration to raise the threshold for Chinese manufacturers caused great difficulties." ”

Pull the big gap

Wenjun that the current gap between domestic chip manufacturers and international manufacturers is mainly reflected in four aspects. "One is the gap between the business model, the United States has a lot of IDM companies, South Korea has a beginning to end of the industrial chain, China's own each other, there is no clear model." The second is the gap between the leading enterprises, TSMC (17.32,-0.24,-1.37%) annual sales of more than 10 billion U.S. dollars, mainland China's top four are not ranked. In the design company, Qualcomm's annual sales of more than 10 billion U.S. dollars, the exhibition (30.4, 0.04, 0.13%) last year also only 700 million U.S. dollars, not to Qualcomm's One-tenth. Third, the production process and technical differences. Four is the capital gap. TSMC, Intel (23.7, 0.00,-0.02%) invested $10 billion a year, with only 400 million or 500 million dollars on the mainland. International manufacturers such as Qualcomm, Boton, etc. through mergers and acquisitions bigger, domestic manufacturers lack of corresponding capital. ”

If the "birth" of domestic chip manufacturers to lose at the starting line, another more important reason is to catch up and pay the expensive costs.

A related cost of the number is, from 65nm (nm), 45nm has been developed to 22nm, 16NM, chip research and development costs are more and more high, 22nm process node is a production line to achieve the profit and loss is expected to invest up to 8 billion ~100 billion, 16nm process node may reach 12 billion ~ 15 billion dollars. At present, almost a few high-end chip design companies can afford this research and development costs, and for the fragmented Chinese chip manufacturing industry, this is almost a curse can not be freed.

"China's semiconductor industry is like the story of Sisyphus pushing stones in ancient Greek mythology, in each new cycle of the semiconductor industry or in the development of every era, we are emphasizing the importance of the industry, it seems that the conclusion is: the domestic semiconductor industry has made significant progress in the past cycle, but the international gap is widening, If you do not develop now, you will waste the last chance. So pay attention to, the relevant policy issued. But after years of effort, the next cycle seems to be back to where it started. Wenjun told reporters.

"Overtaking" opportunities

And in the time axis to 4G ERA, mobile phone chip market or will face a new round of choice.

Wenjun that, from the terminal level, the current domestic LTE chip technology maturity and international brands have a large gap, mainly Huawei, exhibition and other minority manufacturers. Wenjun said that in this area, the current domestic chip has little and Qualcomm competitive strength. Therefore, although Chinese manufacturers in TD-SCDMA accumulated patents and intellectual property, as well as technical advantages, but because the LTE should be multimode standards, and Chinese enterprises in the WCDMA and the field of almost no patents and technology accumulation, which led to competition in the development of Chinese manufacturers will be greatly constrained.

Pan is more optimistic, he said, has been the development of a successful full-format 4G mobile phone chip, but the global only Qualcomm, Heiss and Marvell a few, such as Bo Tong, Nvidia and other international manufacturers are also required six months to a year, which gave the domestic chip manufacturers a certain opportunity.

"At present, Heiss, exhibition, Chuang Yi Video, core technology, MediaTek and other Chinese manufacturers have been involved in LTE (4G) chip design and production." 4G Mobile phone's mass business is the fastest in the second half of next year, it is worth noting that Huawei Heiss is the only Qualcomm outside the only has a large number of output goods manufacturers, has been in Japan, Europe, China, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and other global market large-scale shipments, the industry believes that "gold is very Pan said.

Shiyou, executive vice president of ZTE, said in an interview with reporters that it is really in the mobile phone chip field. "Mobile phone chip layout needs to be proactive, if you can not grasp the core technology, there is no good business model, your business is difficult to survive, so we will spend more energy in the 4G core technology to build above." ”

It is understood that ZTE 2013 LTE terminal mainly to MiFi, CPE and Data card Auxiliary, the second half of the LTE single card dual to mobile phone demand will increase.

"Terminal manufacturers do chip more is in strategic consideration, one can guarantee the supply of special chips, the second is to enhance the price of the right to negotiate the chip." "Wenjun that the industrial development to the advanced stage, the core of the competition is no longer to control the technology itself, but whether the industrial ecology can be controlled, each is not desirable, terminal manufacturers must be allied with the chip maker, or with the chip maker, which in the future will be a mutual game process."