In the future, more than a quarter of the revenue in the chip industry will come from mobile phones, which is why the success or failure of Mphone is related to the success of the entire strategy.
The Americen Semiconductor Industry Association wrote in its April 2021 report "Strengthening the Global Semiconductor Supply Chain in an Era of Uncertainty": In U.S. dollars, mobile phones account for 26% of semiconductor sales.
In the era of mobile Internet, mobile phones require so many chips, more than a dozen semiconductor chips are needed to manage battery, Bluetooth, wifi, cellular network, audio, camera and so on.
Mphone is successful and has occupied a large enough market share in the mobile phone field. Matrix can completely lead the redistribution of part of the semiconductor industry chain.
The craziness of iPhone impressed Zhou Xin deeply when he was studying in California. Starting from iPhone 4, the release of each generation of iPhone has become a carnival for young people. Regardless of whether they are interested in technology or the Internet, they will all pay attention to the release of iPhone.
The sales volume of the first-generation Mphone can satisfy Zhou Xin, after all, it is a castrated version of a smartphone. You must know that when iPhone 6 was released, sales exceeded 10 million in the first week.
So Zhou Xin knew that he had personally kicked off the mobile Internet, and the war was far from being concluded. Even after the global mobile phone market slumped in later generations, the entire smartphone market has been competing for ten years.
In a field that has been competing for more than ten years, except for Apple, which is firmly on the Diaoyutai, not even Samsung dares to say that it will not be eliminated in the field of smartphones.
Therefore, Zhou Xin never believed that Mphone was a sure winner and remained extremely vigilant.
After listening to Zhou Xin's words, Cao Yongluo said: "As expected of you, or you have the level, maybe I have been on the front line, so I feel there is no hope. The Ministry of Information Industry has decided to introduce policies to encourage chip design companies and chip manufacturing companies .
In the past, chip policies have been mixed with the software industry and only accounted for a small part of the space. Now we plan to list chips separately and introduce incentive policies.
I also plan to start in a small field. I established a chip design company called Yongluo Technology in the first half of the year.
I want to start with battery management chips. This field is relatively small, but there is a broad market. You can recruit a group of people first and start in this field. And Texas Instruments has made almost all of its battery management chip technology public.
From design guides to schematics to assembly drawings, and even PCB layouts, all we need to do is to make some changes on their basis, reduce costs, make this solution cost-effective, and then sell it to other mobile phone manufacturers . "
Battery management systems have been around for a long time. Battery management systems were found on very early mobile phones. In the early days, Motorola used disposable circuits to protect mobile phone batteries.
These disposable circuits protect the battery from burning out by setting thresholds. Think of this disposable circuit as the earliest battery management system. After the 1990s, the battery management system consisted of a separate chip integrating the protector and measurement device.
It is integrated into the PCB assembly to protect the battery and is responsible for the conversion, distribution, detection and other power management of electric energy. In other words, monitoring battery power and charging are only the most basic functions of the power management chip.
In daily use, the power management chip is responsible for allocating power to different components of the mobile phone. Once the battery power is detected to be too low, the system will remind the user to charge. Prompting the user to charge is the result of an early warning from the power management chip.
At the same time, during the charging process, if it is detected that the battery is full, the power management chip will cut off the power supply. Even if the mobile phone charger is connected to the mobile phone, it will no longer charge the battery, but will provide power to the mobile phone. Therefore, charging your phone overnight will not cause damage to the phone, nor will the battery life be shortened.
After hearing this, Zhou Xin said: "It seems that you and Lao Guan want to go together. Xinxin Semiconductor also wants to start with battery management chips, Bluetooth chips, and multimedia chips, and use these to train engineers.
Haha, everyone is eyeing the battery management chip. However, it is difficult for battery management chips to compete with Texas Instruments or Infineon. Xinxin Semiconductor can rely on Mphone, while Yongluo Technology's power management chips have to find their own market. "
Texas Instruments is a well-deserved giant in the field of chips. As long as it is related to chips, you can always find that Texas Instruments occupies the C position and attracts the attention of companies entering this field.
Zhou Xin knows that power management chips are extremely promising. Smart battery management chips alone are already a huge market for mobile phones, and electric vehicles are as big a market as smartphones.
If power management is the icing on the cake for smartphones, then for electric vehicles it is the key to their survival. Tesla's battery management system is built by itself, but their battery management chip is a purchased Texas Instruments bq series battery management chip.
Tesla relies only on a Texas Instruments battery monitoring and protection chip to manage all 18650 batteries. Why did Tesla choose Texas Instruments? Because Texas Instruments has made all its battery management chip design documents public.
Tesla can design its own battery management system based on these documents.
By 2021, the global battery management system market share will reach US$7.8 billion, and will grow at a rapid compound growth rate of 19.5% annually, while the market share of battery management chips will be US$4.3 billion.
The early battery management chip was not taken seriously because the effect it achieved was very simple, just battery protection and power measurement, which was far less important than in the future. The main players are Texas Instruments and Infineon, and Texas Instruments makes its technology almost completely public.
After the market became large enough, many new players appeared in battery management chips, such as STMicroelectronics, Analog Devices, Microchip Technology, etc., all of which were late entrants.
The battery management chip also has more missions. It needs to combine measurement performance and application robustness to monitor and balance each battery unit, extend battery life and track the charging process.
Cao Yongluo said: "I also wanted to give it a try. I never thought that I would definitely be able to enter the Mphone supply chain. In the end, it all depends on the quality of the product.
The main reason is that there is a shortage of people. There is too little talent in chip design in China, and those I find almost have to start over.
Compared with me, in terms of presidential preparation, not to mention that you recently poached Professor Hu, you are much better than me in terms of talents. What do you think at Berkeley? You come to school and poach the professor away. "
Zhou Xin said: “So now the head of the Department of Electrical Engineering takes me personally. When I was eating in the cafeteria of Berkeley, I met the principal. He told me that he didn’t believe that I could still recruit Oldham.
Because in the past three years I have been at Berkeley, I have hired many professors from Berkeley to join my company, so the principal did not dare to let Chinese people become my professors. "
Zhou Xin thought to himself, I really can't poach William Oldham, but I can poach Jin Zhijie.
(Jin Zhijie, a Chinese-American female, has served as the chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Berkeley since 2012, and has served as the vice president of Berkeley since 2016.)
Zhou Xin wanted to recruit Jin Zhijie to Xinxin Semiconductor. When the principal told him, what Zhou Xin thought at the time was: Look, I have poached the future chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Berkeley in advance.
Cao Yongluo laughed after hearing this: "Silicon Valley does have much more talents."
When Zhou Xin was chatting with Cao Yongluo in San Francisco, it was eleven o'clock in the morning in China, thousands of miles away.
China has ushered in the first working day of a new week. Everyone knows that China's accession to the WTO is very important to them, but they can't tell why.
At this time, Hu Zhengming had been working at Xinxin Technology for almost two months. He also clarified the future strategic direction after frequent communication with Zhou Xin.
At this time, he is fully promoting the cooperation between Xinxin Technology and Huahong Semiconductor. Hu Zhengming believes that he still has to control a chip manufacturing company after all.
"Mr. Jiang, what do you think of the cooperation plan we proposed earlier?" Hu Zhengming asked.
Jiang here always refers to Jiang Shoulei, the vice chairman of Huahong Group, who is also the vice chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association. He can almost be said to be a full participant in China’s chip industry. As early as 1968, the state-owned company in Wuxi 742 factory work.
Jiang Shoulei said: "Professor Hu, we have been dealing with each other for many years. In 1995, I was still the vice president of Huayue Electronics. At that time, you came to Yanda to give lectures. I went to listen specially and then asked for advice privately. Got you some questions.
We should be considered old friends. I am very happy to see top talents like Professor Hu dedicating themselves to China's chip industry.
At the same time, we have no doubt about the financial strength of Xinxin Technology, nor the technical strength. With Xinxin Technology's financial strength, it can recruit engineers from places such as Silicon Valley, Hsinchu, Tokyo, and Seoul.
Therefore, both publicly and privately, I agree with the cooperation between Huahong Group and Xinxin Technology.
I only have one question, that is, Xinxin Technology relies on technology and capital to invest in shares. You do not hold a controlling stake, but you need to adopt the method of different rights for the same shares, and you need to have control of the newly established joint venture.
This is difficult to agree upon when making internal decisions. Take Huahong NEC, a joint venture between Neon's NEC and Huahong, as an example. The conditions offered by NEC are average now, but when DRAM prices were high, they were very good.
They are willing to contract all sales of chips produced by Huahong NEC. We only need to do a good job in chip manufacturing.
Even so, we did not hand over the control of Huahong NEC to NEC. "
Hu Zhengming interrupted: "Mr. Jiang, we can be more straightforward. I visited Huahong NEC and I also talked with Shimakura Keiichi.
At Huahong NEC, most of the middle managers were airborne from NEC from Tokyo. Although the chairman of the board was appointed by Huahong, to put it bluntly, it only served as a seal and signature.
Keiichi Shimakura is the actual manager of Huahong NEC, including the future business direction of Huahong NEC: strengthening cooperation with Chinese LSI design companies and producing LSI for the Chinese market. Users are not limited to China's semiconductor foundry business, accepting NEC production commissions, etc.
Hua Hong actually didn't interfere with this.
The goals that Xinxin Technology wants to achieve are similar to NEC, and compared with NEC, Xinxin Technology has stronger strength both in terms of capital and market level. "
The main reason is that Hu Zhengming is impatient. To put it bluntly, the conditions offered by Xinxin Technology are very favorable. Huahong lost 700 million yuan in the first eight months of this year. They only made more than 1 billion yuan a year during the period of disruption. After deducting 800 million yuan of depreciation, the profit was 350 million yuan.
The condition given by New Core Technology is that it will invest US$200 million in shares. Huahong will inject its own 8-inch production line into the new company as assets. New Core Technology is willing to promise that the annual sales revenue of the chip foundry after the joint venture will be more than 2 billion yuan. .
Jiang Shoulei shook his head: "No, no, no, Professor Hu, you misunderstood what I meant. I know that the conditions offered by Xinxin are very favorable.
What I want to say is that the control rights of Huahong NEC are in the hands of Neon people. This is because we ask them for help, but even so, the control rights of Huahong NEC are not written into any contract.
We maintain a tacit understanding with NEC, and we can maintain this same tacit understanding with Xinxin Technology.
The newly established Huahong-Xinxin will manage this company and manage chip production, but we cannot write it into the contract. "
An 8-inch production line costs between US$700 million and US$800 million. Huahong currently only has one 8-inch production line.
Chip manufacturing is so expensive that even Zhou Xin cannot afford such a huge asset investment.
Therefore, he discussed with Hu Zhengming whether new methods could be adopted to cooperate with state-owned enterprises.
Many places in China want to engage in semiconductors and replicate the success of Silicon Valley. Yanjing has planned a US$30 billion Northern Microelectronics Industrial Base, with Shougang as the main contractor. Shougang invested US$1.35 billion at the beginning of this year to build an 8-inch chip factory, including two 8-inch, That is, the 0.25 micron production line.
Of course, Shougang later shelved the plan, and then invested the money in the real estate field, and real estate became Shougang's main business.
Not only later, Huahong’s huge losses in the first eight months have still scared other places that want to engage in semiconductors.
All places across the country that want to engage in semiconductors want to wait and see.
But this does not prevent Hu Zhengming from using it as a bargaining chip: "Mr. Jiang, not only Huahong has an 8-inch production line, there are also other companies, such as Shougang's 8-inch production line, which is about to go online. We are not the only one who can cooperate with Huahong." Object.
Including Shenhai and private companies such as SMIC.
We chose Huahong because we have a good foundation for cooperation before and Huahong has sufficient experience in the chip manufacturing field.
But it doesn't mean that Hua Hong is the only target.
I know your concerns, and Xinxin Technology also has its own persistence. "
(End of chapter)
