Huawei released high-profile "unicorn" chip

Reporter Shi Jian Shenzhen reported

Handset chip industry is quite "new peach for old symbol" means.

That side of the box, the world's second largest chip design firm Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM) has just announced its withdrawal from the mobile baseband chip business; this side of the box, Huawei's chip business Haisi for the first time to "unicorn" brand released a world-class chip.

"The chip currently released not only meets the cutting edge requirements of 8-core, 4G and other handset industries, but also supports Cat6 in the world for the first time." One industry participant in the latest HiSilicon chip press conference expressed support for 21st Century Business Herald. Cat6 so that it can peak 300M download, "This is even the two giants of the mobile phone chip industry Qualcomm, MediaTek has not yet done."

Huawei HiSilicon's first launch of the "unicorn" brand, but also very easy to let the outside world and its Qualcomm's "Snapdragon" brand linked.

Hussein is one of the most understated business segments in Huawei, a company that has always been known for its low profile. Founded in 2004, HiSilicon, although many years ago, has surpassed Spreadtrum as the largest chip design company in mainland China, it is almost invisible in front of the media. Therefore, HiSilicon last Friday (June 6) held a conference for Kirin Another point is: Huawei's chip business over the years, keeping a low profile strategy has reached the inflection point?

Power chip logic

Over the years, oil, chips, iron ore and liquid crystal panels have been the top four single-item items for China's imports. Among them, the two related to the electronic information industry, the LCD panel in recent years, BOE, TCL Group's force, domestic substitution has been more obvious effects, while the chip's import volume and trade deficit on the contrary has been increasing, and even has More than oil, ranked the first big importer.

According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs in January this year, China's IC imports amounted to 232.2 billion U.S. dollars last year, up 34.6% over the previous year, exceeding the total amount of 219.6 billion U.S. dollars worth of crude oil imports in that year. The trade deficit with ICs has been rising for four consecutive years The year expanded to 141.4 billion U.S. dollars.

Chip is the "heart" of the electronic information industry, both from the industrial safety and national security point of view, the development of this upstream industry are influential. It is in this sense that the national level is continuously releasing policy signals that support the development of the integrated circuit industry. Details of a series of policies, including supporting funds, are expected to be introduced in the near future.

In the recent ten years, the chip design industry in China has witnessed a rapid development. A number of listed companies such as Spreadtrum and Ruidike Branch were born. Many companies are planning to go public. However, the gap between the industry and the world's most advanced level is shortened Still expanding, but controversial.

For Huawei, involved in the chip business, apparently without reason. By the end of March this year, Xu Zhijun, vice chairman of Huawei, said in an interview with 21st Century Business Herald. Huawei's position is to support the hardware structure of the company's own products, with leading differentiation and competitiveness.

Since its establishment 10 years ago, Huawei Hass has gradually realized these aspects in terms of value. For example, on the router business, Huawei launched a 400G backbone router product in November 2013 and successfully commercialized Alibaba Group's "Double 11" shopping festival more than a year earlier than any leading Cisco company in the world. The reason, Hass on the router chip support has played an important role.

As another example, in the 4G handset market, China Mobile had previously selected Huawei's chip suppliers for its 4G handset terminals, except Huawei and Marvell. As MediaTek's 4G chip to be commercially available until the second half of this year, many mobile phone manufacturers are subject to Qualcomm chip supply, while Huawei can support the launch of P7 by Hassith chips, hardware performance not inferior using Qualcomm high-end chip products.

Developed up to now, Huawei Hass has done the first in mainland China. China Semiconductor Industry Association disclosed "2012 China Top Ten integrated circuit design enterprises," Hisilicon to 7.42 billion yuan in sales ranked first. In March this year, Huaqiang Electronics Industry Research Institute of China in 2013 IC design company sales rankings, Hisilicon 2.1 billion US dollars also in the first place, its size is ranked second in the Spreadtrum twice.

"Due to the small part of Hisilicon chips sold overseas, the outside world has some speculation on the scale of the Haas concept." Chip industry celebrities Lao Jia believes.

Strategy of keeping a low profile

According to sources close to Haisi revealed that the current team of Hassys is mainly divided into three parts: respectively, services in the system equipment business, mobile terminal business, external sales.

Among them, the main external sales of security chips and TV set-top box chip, especially in the domestic market share of security is extremely high, has surpassed Texas Instruments to become the first. However, this part of the annual revenue is relatively small, about 200 million US dollars; the largest team is to serve the system equipment team; serving the mobile terminal Haisi team size of about 1,500 people.

The release of the unicorn chip that is serving the mobile terminal Haisi team. "Although the size of the team is not big compared to 8,000 MediaTeks, the baseband chip technology responsible for communications can be said to have not lost or even exceed MediaTek's." Those who were close to Haas cited earlier said Huawei The communication background and accumulation of Hass on the mobile baseband chips to provide a catch-up.

"Although Qualcomm may have Cat6 technology, but at least not yet released, market leaders will have their own rhythm in releasing new products and will consider the product lifecycles of their vast product lines." The source said that these mean Hass The latest release of Kirin chip is a world-class products.

Although technology and products already have a strong, Huawei's strategy has always been to use "keep a low profile" to describe, very little external disclosure of information.

Huawei tries to ease the concerns and vigilance from outsiders, including competitors and partners. Ren Zhengfei, CEO of Huawei, once summed it up as a "tip-style survival." Ren Zhengfei, in a speech delivered by the CEO of Huawei in his 2013 annual report, said: "We could only lead the US companies in the big needle-pointed area. If we expand to matches or sticks, it will never be possible."

Hays is one of Huawei's "tip-style survival" samples. In fact, this fact has been fulfilled. In March 2012, Huawei unveiled its quad-core K3V2 at the Telecom World in Barcelona and disclosed it would use Ascend D for its own high-end smartphones. But later, the phone's listing time later than originally scheduled for several months. As one of the reasons, one of the reasons is that, as a result of the high-profile announcement of the product news, Samsung, a fellow company, was afraid of this quad-core product and stuck for a while on the phone screen.

After this incident, Huawei is more cautious about Hass's propaganda.

Short-term export is unlikely

"Huawei does not regard the semiconductor as a business." Xu Zhijun had previously stressed in an interview with reporters that some of Hisilicon's chips were sold by the way. Huawei did not regard the semiconductor as its business area and did not position Hisilicon as the only chip of Huawei Vendors, "We are now adopting a 1 + 1 or 1 + N strategy," that is to say, Huawei's products use a HiSilicon chip and one or more chips from other suppliers in the industry .

Obviously, Huawei is trying its best to ease the vigilance of the outside world. It is reflected in the mobile terminal business that Huawei does not want to use its own HiSilicon chip and will affect the supply of Qualcomm, MediaTek and other chips.

"Kirin release, it can be said is an inflection point signal." The above Haisi people think that this is Hass's propaganda strategy is worth pondering, to abandon the "hidden tactic to end the debate," the discussion, on the other hand, "also shows Hass More confident. "

Lao Tuo that in the past, HiSilicon is pushed by the Huawei terminal, the application of mobile terminal business scenarios provide a chance for trial and error, and HiSilicon will become the contribution of Huawei's terminal business power, Huawei Terminal Highly homogeneous market competition in the difference fulcrum.

For the concerns of the outside world Haisi phone chip sales will not be the problem, the old judge's judgment is that "Hass has more important things to do in the short term will not and should not want to promote things."

"If you do that, it only shows that Huawei has a problem with the strategy." Lao Tuan believes Huawei will not have any impact on Qualcomm and MediaTek in the short to medium term because of its low probability of being exported. "The breakthrough in technology is one Going back to the market promotion is one thing, Haisi focus should not be in the export. " (Editor Lu Aifang Xin Court Wei)