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Unexpected "Stress Test" Of 5G Mobile Phone

2021/3/5 10:39:00 0

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In the first quarter, a wave of 5g new machine releases has been launched. Meanwhile, executives of many manufacturers point to a core out of stock, namely, the 5g chip of Qualcomm snapdragon 888.

In fact, the overall reasons for the shortage of chips are relatively complex. In addition to the conventional concentration of new products by mobile phone manufacturers during this period, the process maturity of wafer manufacturers is different. The automobile industry, which has always had low inventory, realized the lack of core very late, and now the demand is being squeezed by reverse order addition. The number of components in 5g terminals has doubled, but the field is mostly low process chip technology, It's not where the fab is expanding its capacity, and so on.

The 21st century economic reporter has learned from many sources and found that for the mobile phone industry, the chip shortage presents a "spindle" state: 5g flagship chips with the most high-end process, and components with relatively low process but high quantity requirements are more out of stock, and they are not easy to be relieved this year. Chips in the middle are relatively easy to breathe a sigh of relief in the subsequent stages.

Then, for mobile phone manufacturers, this year, because Huawei "gives up" part of the market, the industry share window period will not only focus on products, marketing and channels, but also add a deeper level of supply chain control ability.

In this context, the industry believes that the new opportunities for small and medium-sized brands will not be easy to capture because of the relatively weak control over the supply chain.

In 2021, when 5g terminals become popular on a large scale, stress testing will suddenly come.

"Spindle" type core missing

There is only a big V distance from the industry consensus to the public consensus.

A few days ago, Xiaomi executives publicly said on the social platform that "this year's chip is too short, is extremely short of..." For a time, the topic was pushed to hot search. Subsequently, many high-end terminal manufacturers expressed similar feelings. This is probably rare in the history of mobile phones in recent years.

Xu Qi, vice president of realme and President of global marketing, said at the launch site on March 4 that the company would adopt the strategy of "dual platform + double flagship", that is, to adopt the dual flagship 5g platform of Qualcomm snapdragon 8 series and MediaTek Tianji series, and create two flagship series of performance and image respectively.

In an interview with reporters such as the 21st century economic report after the meeting, Xu Qi said frankly that the world is facing the problem of core shortage this year. "We are actively responding in two ways. First, we plan the demand for related chips in advance. Early planning can relieve some chip tension. Second, our" dual platform "strategy is also a way to actively respond. We choose chips from different manufacturers through product characteristics to reduce the pressure on the demand for a single chip."

Xu Qi explained to reporters that this shortage is a periodic outbreak, and there is no specific definition of medium, high and low-end products. However, at present, high-end chips must be more out of stock, and manufacturers need to plan and prepare for them.

He also believes that the degree of relief for the lack of core should not be too optimistic, and be prepared to continue until the end of the year. "Frankly speaking, there are still some small problems." last year, we found that the chip of the thousand yuan machine was relatively out of stock, but this year we saw that the part of the thousand yuan machine was recovering, and the level of shortage of the flagship model was higher. "

Gai Xinshan, director of semiconductor research at counterpoint research, told the 21st century business reporter that relatively speaking, mature processes, especially power management chips, are out of stock and cannot be solved. Compared with the 4G era, 5g terminals require twice or even more power management chips, which directly points to the current shortage of 8-inch wafer technology, which is also the field that automobile factories are scrambling for.

"The power supply chip is the most difficult problem in structure, and it may not be able to solve the shortage problem by the end of this year. So for the mobile phone factory, even if there are other core chips such as CPU, but there is no power management chip, it means that the whole machine can not be provided. " He told reporters that the market said that Qualcomm chips are out of stock, more should be the shortage of chip kits including power management chips, RF chips, etc. from this point of view, this is indeed in a tight state of supply and demand.

Sui qian, senior director of wireless smart phone strategy at strategy analytics, told reporters, "as far as I know, the supply of low and medium-sized chips with 14 nanometers is more tense than that of high-end 5g chips."

She added that the shortage situation in the mobile phone industry is far better than that in the automobile industry, and the main manufacturers will also be affected by the core shortage, but the overall situation is controllable. However, some small manufacturers should be more affected.

"The adjustment cycle of the chip industry is generally more than six months. As the domestic supply chain tension eases under the international environment adjustment, the situation of spare parts tension is expected to ease in the second half or the end of this year." Sui qian said.

However, globally, 4G mobile phone chips are actually more scarce than 5g.

According to the analysis from the middle-level personage of mobile phone manufacturers to the 21st century economic report, only 5g terminals in the Chinese market are deployed faster, and the larger market scope is actually in the 4G market. In contrast, 5g chips will have a greater profit performance than 4G chips, leading to the current chip suppliers focusing on 5g chips rather than 4G chips.

People in the semiconductor industry expressed similar views to reporters. "At present, 4G mobile phones are still the mainstream in Southeast Asia, India, central and South America. However, Qualcomm and MediaTek will focus on 5g this year, because 4G means to some extent that it will be gradually eliminated in the future, and for chip factories, it will become a dead stock in the future. As far as I know, the 7 nm 4G chips of these two manufacturers are also being actively seized. "

Overall, the current mobile phone industry is characterized by structural lack of core. Gaixinshan analyzed to reporters that the supply of secondary high-end chips is relatively enough, and it is believed that the supply and demand will tend to be relatively stable in the middle and later stages of the year.

"The secondary high-end chips mainly include MediaTek Tianji 1100 and 1200, and high-pass snapdragon 765, 870 and 716. Most of these chips are in the 6-7nm process. Samsung and TSMC are already in the stage of capacity control." He continued.

Gai Hin Shan believes that chips in the field will reach the manufacturer's "safe stock" level from September to October. But in the next few months, the industry as a whole may still usher in the peak of supply and demand shortage.

Relatively less out of stock, may only be in part of the functional link. He told reporters, for example, in the high-end image sensor section.

Accompanied by the lack of core, is the continuous price rise, even if the previous continuous oversupply in the field of memory dram, has continued to be hot.

For mobile phone manufacturers, to ensure that the products match the company's strategy, but also to cope with the rising cost of components, profit will be the next problem.

Mobile phone manufacturers stress testing

Even in the past few years, smaller manufacturers have faced the founder's public apology for the lack of mobile phones, let alone today.

As a result, Huawei's share, which was originally temporarily ceded by Huawei, is more likely to flow to large-scale manufacturers with more weight advantages and supply chain front-end management capabilities. Previously, the industry believed that the share space that small manufacturers might gain would be very limited.

However, manufacturers with a long history of growth may have alternative methods. Meizu chose to bind more with Qualcomm. Some trends can be seen from the chip released by Meizu on March 3.

Meizu didn't adopt the configuration of Qualcomm and MediaTek, which is widely adopted by manufacturers recently. Instead, Meizu deployed two products of the same series on the Qualcomm snapdragon 888 chip. At the same time, Meizu and Qualcomm were strongly bound to carry the ultrasonic fingerprint identification chip that Qualcomm always insisted on promoting, while other mainstream manufacturers generally adopted the screen designed by domestic manufacturers Under the identification fingerprint chip.

This deployment can make Meizu, whose overall volume is smaller, concentrate its chip requirements. For the supply chain, the larger demand volume of manufacturers will undoubtedly make them more motivated to supply.

In an interview, Wan Zhiqiang, assistant vice president of Meizu, also said that one of the company's advantages in the supply chain is that "suppliers attach great importance to whether they can give full play to their value".

The advantage of realme, which is independently developed and operated, is supported by oppo's supply chain.

Xu Qi told the 21st century economic reporter that the supply chain is out of stock this year. In the process of purchasing, the price will be more expensive.

"However, for realme, firstly, our brand has been operating in a light asset mode since its birth, which has been done in such ways as channels and marketing, so I can still have competitive prices; secondly, realme has a strong supply chain support capability and can obtain relatively competitive costs in the industry."

He said frankly, for terminal manufacturers, this will bring greater pressure on the company's procurement planning. "Because we are not faced with a shortage of single chips, we need to reserve and plan our products in advance to form a total amount."

However, he also said that the pace of new product launch of realme will be faster this year. From the perspective of chip, the company has a detailed plan one year in advance. "Realme will be more prepared to fight the Chinese market this year."

Although the price has been rising for some time, the price or profit performance brought by shortage has not been particularly obvious at present. It is more likely that the new machine released more high-end products last year.

According to the counter point statistics obtained by 21st century economic reporter, in the fourth quarter of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019, the share of mobile phones with selling prices of $500-800 has increased, while the share of sales price below $500 is declining.

Brady, assistant research director of the agency, pointed out to reporters, "with our current data, we can't see that the terminal sales price is too much affected by the lack of core. In the past year, each mobile phone OEM has a large number of components in stock. So it shouldn't react so quickly. "

For this year's profit performance, sui qian is not very pessimistic. She told reporters that, in fact, with the intensification of integration, the whole industry has gathered in the head, and the profits are mainly controlled by apple and a few limited Android manufacturers. In 2020, although the overall smartphone market performance is low, but the overall profit margin has increased, mainly due to the pulling effect of apple. The trend is likely to continue this year.

"The change of the whole industry last year is that both the low-end and the high-end have increased. On the contrary, the middle-end price tends to be compressed by the low-end and the high-end, and this trend may continue to exist this year. We predict that the global wholesale price of smart phones will rise by 8% to nearly $300 this year, and mainstream manufacturers will have a trend of rising prices. " She continued.

 

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