Image source @Visual China
Article｜News of Science and Technology
Compared with the 4G era, Qualcomm in the 5G era is in a hurry recently.
In order to revive its core flagship chip market, Qualcomm held the “2022 Snapdragon Night” online live broadcast conference and officially launched the Snapdragon 8Gen1 Plus processor. Slogan was designated as “chip friends, come and meet.”
The new flagship product has been replaced from the previous generation of Samsung’s 4nm process to TSMC’s 4nm process. The core architecture remains unchanged. In theory, it has AI computing power with greater throughput, stronger performance, lower power consumption and enhanced stability. sex.
The first batch of mobile phone brands equipped with Snapdragon 8Gen1 Plus include at least: Xiaomi, Redmi, Black Shark, OPPO, OnePlus, realme, vivo, iQOO, Motorola, Asus, Samsung and other mainstream manufacturers. Although there are many models in the first batch, the only ones who really hope to get the first launch are Xiaomi and Motorola, a few traditional Qualcomm friends.
However, it is worth noting that in the past, the upgrade of the high-frequency version of the Snapdragon 8 series SoC was generally set in late June each year, and the product upgrade of this chip was advanced by one month. Not only that, Qualcomm is also speeding up significantly in the preparation of consumer-oriented terminal products.
According to market forecasts, a variety of new phones equipped with Snapdragon 8Gen1 Plus will be mass-produced and launched as early as June. In previous years, the upgraded Plus version of the previous generation Snapdragon 888 was launched on June 28, and the first model was not released until August, with an interval of nearly two months.
This time, the Snapdragon 8Gen1 series broke the update rhythm and accelerated the production speed, all of which revealed Qualcomm’s anxiety about the mediocre performance of this generation of flagship chips.
According to the latest data from market research firm CINNO Research, in the first quarter of 2022, MediaTek ranked first in China’s smartphone SoC market with a share of 41.2%, an increase of about 7% year-on-year; Qualcomm ranked second with a share of about 35.9%, a year-on-year increase. An increase of about 4%.
The market share and growth rate both lag behind the old rival MediaTek, which was not a big deal. Since Q3 2020, Qualcomm gave up its market share position, and MediaTek has maintained the first position for seven consecutive quarters.
The main reason is that the strategies of the two parties are different. For the mobile phone market that is transitioning to 5G, Qualcomm’s main strategy is to fully bet on 5G SoC products, make a high-profit 5G market, and basically hand over the 4G market to MediaTek.
But in the first quarter of 2022, MediaTek is gradually surpassing the 5G SoC chip market that Qualcomm is proud of. In terms of breakdown, among the smartphone 5G SoC shipments in mainland China this quarter, MediaTek’s market share is about 40.5%, and Qualcomm’s share is about 36.8%.
The report believes that in the 5G market, MediaTek’s market share advantage is also strengthening. As MediaTek Dimensity 8100 and Dimensity 9000 and other chips begin to be mass-produced, more and more mid-to-high-end mobile phone products are launched, and their market share is expected to further increase in the future.
Obviously this is unwilling to accept Qualcomm. But there is no doubt that, compared to the Xiaomi OV in the 4G era, which dominates Qualcomm, in the mobile phone core processor market, an offensive and defensive exchange between Qualcomm and MediaTek is quietly happening.
Qualcomm is no longer the only solution for flagships
In the 4G era, the dual flagship strategy is very popular. For example, the well-known Samsung Galaxy S/Note series, Huawei’s Mate/P series, and Xiaomi’s MIX/digital series are representative brands.
However, the premise of the establishment of the dual flagship is that the differentiated selling points of the two products are sufficient. Otherwise, you will face the problem of upgrading and homogenization of changing the shell without changing the core.
Therefore, the dual-flagship camp at that time was mainly dominated by Samsung and Huawei with self-developed chips. After Xiaomi’s self-developed chips failed and mobile phone technology innovation stagnated, the MIX series was discontinued until it disappeared.
Now in the 5G era, dual flagships have become popular in the product strategies of mobile phone manufacturers. Unlike in the past, which mainly focused on two series of products, the dual flagship in the 5G era emphasizes two products in the same series.
The main reason why the same series of two flagship products can be realized is that this round of four major domestic mobile phone manufacturers have built dual flagship products on the configuration of two flagship chips of Qualcomm Snapdragon and MediaTek, avoiding the homogenous release at the same time. change.
The first is vivo, the S15 series released on the evening of May 19, including vivo S15 and vivo S15 Pro. The former is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 870, while the latter is equipped with MediaTek Dimensity 8100.
It will be followed by the OPPO Reno 8 series, which will be officially released on May 23. Judging from the current warm-up news, the series will include three products of Reno 8/8 Pro/8 Pro+. Among them, the Pro version is expected to be equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor for the first time in the world, and is equipped with OPPO self-developed chip Mariana MariSilicon X; Pro+ version processor will be upgraded to Dimensity 8100 plus MariSilicon X.
The last is the Honor digital series to be released at the end of this month. According to the current public information, the Honor 70 series includes three products: Honor 70, 70Pro, and 70Pro+. The processors will be equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, MediaTek Dimensity 8100 chip, MediaTek’s flagship core Dimensity 9000.
Not only that, even Xiaomi, a long-time Qualcomm professional user, has market news that the Xiaomi Mi 12S Pro equipped with MediaTek Dimensity 9000 processor will be released in August. Previously, Xiaomi’s high-end product lines were all based on Qualcomm’s flagship chips, and MediaTek was mainly used in its sub-brand Redmi series products.
Under the dual-core dual-flagship strategy, combing the upcoming mid-to-high-end flagship products, we can find that it is different from the flagship of the 4G era. , is becoming a true portrayal of the current mobile phone selection of SoC chips.
In terms of 5G high-end mobile phone products, the four major mainstream manufacturers have tacitly launched two to three products in the same series, equipped with flagship chips of Qualcomm and MediaTek, respectively, to give consumers differentiated choices.
However, in the low-end 4G market, because of Qualcomm’s strategic abandonment, it has been fully seized by MediaTek.
Not only that, thanks to the favor of mid-to-high-end models, MediaTek’s market image is also changing from the past that only small factories such as Meizu were willing to carry flagship chips to the same treatment as Qualcomm, becoming the only choice for mainstream domestic manufacturers.
When Qualcomm is no longer the only solution for flagship mobile phone chips, under the new situation of “dual flagship dual chips”, de-Qualcommization of high-end mobile phones is gradually becoming a common choice for domestic manufacturers. With the emergence of consensus, another crisis of Qualcomm is also emerging.
Integration vs customization
As we all know, for domestic mobile phone brands that are currently collectively impacting the high-end market, they will be questioned for lack of hard power like Apple and Huawei to gain a firm foothold in the high-end market with self-developed chips. The main reason for this biggest weakness can be traced back to the “turnkey” solution launched by MediaTek in the era of feature phones.
At that time, MediaTek launched a solution to integrate multiple types of chips (such as audio, video decoding, and signal processing) into one chip, and provided systems and development platforms. This makes mobile phone manufacturers only need to buy a set of MediaTek solutions, and then add a case and camera to build a functional phone.
In the era of smartphones, the same integrated solution has been continued, and it is the Android system + chip suppliers who play the role of lowering the threshold. Smartphone manufacturers do not need to design complex operating systems, nor do they need to accumulate chips with hundreds of millions of transistors. They only need to buy a SoC (system-on-chip) on which functional modules such as CPU, baseband, DSP, ISP, and GPU are already arranged. , and then put on the Android system, a mobile phone product belonging to its own brand can be mass-produced and marketed.
The “turnkey” integrated solution has changed the development logic of the entire mobile phone industry – the threshold for delivering mobile terminal products, from technical capabilities to marketing capabilities and supply chain management capabilities. On the surface, the threshold of the industry is lowered, but for mobile phone brands, the performance differentiation of end consumer products is no longer determined by themselves, but by third-party systems and chip manufacturers.
In the stage of staking the mobile phone market, domestic manufacturers choose to optimize the user experience on the third-party Android system, and develop the so-called exclusive operating system with brand symbols. During this period, Xiaomi OV with strong software capabilities and marketing capabilities came out, and finally established the current “big four” market structure.
Today, in the stage of stock competition that is fully impacting the high-end market, when the hard power of self-developed chips takes time to accumulate, and the differentiation of hardware is urgently put on the table, the choice of compromise can only be to play with the original customized software system. study.
For example, the surging C1 ISP chip, which was previously the main image experience of Xiaomi, is mounted on the MIX FOLD high-end flagship product. However, with the improvement of the performance of the built-in ISP of the Dimensity 9000 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen1, the Surging C1 quickly lost the opportunity to appear on Xiaomi Mi 12, Redmi K50 and other models.
Not only that, at the launch of the new-generation flagship processor Snapdragon 8 Gen1 at the end of December last year, the person in charge of Qualcomm said in the interview that domestic manufacturers will launch new technologies soon for the phenomenon of self-developed ISP chips by domestic manufacturers. The ISP chip developed by the manufacturer to improve the image signal processing has no effect.
Compared with Qualcomm’s strength in integrated chips, as an integrated SoC supplier, MediaTek chose to explore new cooperation models with mobile phone manufacturers for 5G chips.
In May 2021, MediaTek launched Dimensity 5G “open architecture”. It can be simply understood that MediaTek has opened up part of the underlying architecture of the Dimensity chip, and mobile phone manufacturers using the “Dimensity 1200” chip can make deeper customization of the chip according to their own needs.
This means that under the open architecture, MediaTek reserves a part of the right to speak to the chip for mobile phone manufacturers. This can save mobile phone manufacturers from grabbing the first launch of flagship chips, but to differentiate and in-depth customization according to their own product iteration rhythm.
The recently released vivo X80 is a good example. After the OPPO Find X5 Pro had already grabbed the first window period of the Dimensity 9000 chip in late February, vivo still released the X80 series of flagship mobile phones equipped with the Dimensity 9000 at its own pace in April.
The reason why you don’t care about the first launch window period is that the vivo X80, based on the Dimensity 9000, has in-depth cooperation with MediaTek, and is equipped with vivo’s self-developed V1+ image chip. In his speech at the dual-core technology communication meeting, Chen Guanzhou, general manager of MediaTek, believed that the technological innovation of this product is based on the co-creation of long-term in-depth cooperation between the two parties.
Previously, after each Qualcomm chip was released, major mobile phone manufacturers had to scramble for the first launch. This is because Qualcomm’s flagship chips have become, to some extent, an important selling point for manufacturers’ products. It’s just that when mobile phone manufacturers need differentiated hard power, Qualcomm’s closed integration prompted the two to part ways.
A new competition has just begun
As an old rival of Qualcomm, MediaTek’s open strategy has made the self-developed technical strength of mobile phone manufacturers a selling point to a certain extent. Obviously, this is quite attractive to domestic manufacturers who are trapped in the high-end road because of the lack of hard power.
However, this does not mean that an open strategy can bind MediaTek and mobile phone manufacturers together.
For mobile phone hardware manufacturing, cost is the ultimate consideration for all choices. Whether it is an early choice of a highly integrated solution that can quickly enter the running volume, or an in-depth customized solution that is currently selected.
The former is to win the incremental market with quantity, and it cares about market share; the latter is to win the stock competition with quality, and it cares about the brand premium. However, nothing is absolute. For deep customization cooperation, as a new form of hardware differentiation for mobile phone manufacturers, cost may be its biggest problem.
Directly purchasing integrated chip suppliers can dilute the cost with mobile phone manufacturers that use the same chip in the entire industry; in-depth customization cooperation means that the development of a piece of hardware is supported by only one mobile phone manufacturer. Once the product is not recognized by the market, then the early stage The cost of input creates a loss.
If it is said that this loss can also be controlled as much as possible through the previous market forecast, the other problem comes from the efficiency problem under the professional division of labor.
From the perspective of business competition, Qualcomm’s “squeeze toothpaste” upgrade of chip technology in the 5G era has made it face dual pressure from MediaTek and mobile phone manufacturers. But as a setter of 5G technical standards, Qualcomm’s hard power obviously cannot be underestimated.
According to the “2021 Android Mobile Phone Processor Market Analysis Report” released by the market research agency Counterpoint Research, from the perspective of the overall technology accumulation, Qualcomm’s various modules have strong capabilities, from the patent technology level to the global market position and influence. Is the undisputed king.
Taking 5G baseband as an example, as a communication module chip second only to SoC, Qualcomm is still far ahead of its peers with a global market share of nearly 60%.
Not only that, but in terms of efficiency, after the failure of the flagship chip of the Snapdragon 8Gen1 generation, Qualcomm quickly turned from a lying state to an attacking state, and released a high-frequency upgraded version of the Snapdragon 8Gen1 plus chip in less than half a year. Obviously, when Qualcomm is no longer lying flat and the efficiency is full, MediaTek will also usher in a head-to-head contest.
Regardless of the outcome, the mobile phone processor market is entering a new phase of competition. The tension of the upstream supply chain and the demand of downstream brand manufacturers may be the breeze that wrinkles the spring water.
References:
- Can MediaTek get rid of Qualcomm? —— Hot Micro Comments
- The “MediaTek Moment” of New Energy Vehicles – Yuanchuan Technology Review
- Launching an open architecture, a key step for MediaTek to break through 5G
media coverage
Titanium Media NetEase News Sohu IT Home Sohu TechWeb CNBeta
event tracking
- 2022-05-23 Xiaomi OV rushes to high-end: MediaTek picks up leaks, Qualcomm is replaced
- 2022-04-01 Ming-Chi Kuo: China’s major Android phone brands have cut orders by 20% this year
- 2022-03-30MediaTek , Qualcomm may cut some chip quotations
- 2021-03-16 Qualcomm chips are tight, Xiaomi will increase the proportion of MediaTek orders
- 2020-12-28Benefiting from Huawei Xiaomi, MediaTek surpassed Qualcomm to become the mobile phone chip manufacturer with the highest market share in the third quarter
This article is reprinted from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8gfaq3WgNXh
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.