Recently, a company announced that "5G chip products have been successfully tape-out", which attracted the attention of the public.
Because Huawei HiSilicon was under strong sanctions from the United States and could not find a suitable fab tape-out, it was difficult to effectively promote the research and development and supply of 5G chips, and Huawei had to sell Glory. The strategic value of 5G chips has been highly valued by the industry.
So, what is the origin of Aojie Technology, which successfully streamed 5G chips? What is the value of this chip?
Aojie Technology successfully landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board this year. Recently, the company revealed in an institutional survey that the company's 5G chip products have been successful, and the company is continuing to actively promote the mass production of 5G chips.
Aojie Technology emphasizes that cellular baseband chips have the characteristics of high barriers, large market scale, and few competitors with 2G-5G cellular baseband technology capabilities. Cellular baseband chips have strong technical barriers and market barriers, technical barriers are mainly reflected in: the need to master the standard experience of 2G-4G technology, to ensure the compatibility of massive code, to overcome the design complexity brought by multi-band full compatibility, but also to meet the extreme requirements of mobile terminals for power consumption, area, cost, etc.; market barriers are mainly reflected in: First of all, it is necessary to pass the compatibility certification test of hundreds of operators around the world. Secondly, the chip also needs to pass customer verification, the verification cycle is long, and the stickiness to the main chip manufacturer's solution is large.
As you can see, this is a 5G baseband chip.
Commendable industry veterans
As Aojie Technology said, there are not many companies in the world that can develop 5G baseband chips, only Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei HiSilicon, MediaTek, Intel and a few others, and Apple, which is already advancing. Although the volume of Aojie Technology is not large, but has been struggling in the communications industry for many years, the founder and chairman Dai Baojia founded Rui Di Ke (RDA) in 2004, is one of the important baseband chip suppliers in the GSM era; in 2013, Rui Di Ke was acquired by Unigroup, and then merged with Spreadtrum Communications under Unigroup, forming the largest mobile phone chip supplier in the Chinese mainland.
In April 2015, Dai Baojia and some former employees of Rui di Ke founded Aojie Technology (ASR). After its establishment, Aojie Technology has made 4 important acquisitions, the most important of which is the acquisition of Marvell Mobile Communications Business in 2017, an important supplier in the TD-SCDMA era.
It is reported that Aojie Technology only spent 366 million yuan on the price, which can be called "bottom reading". This brings a deep accumulation of 2G-4G technology to Aojie Technology. In 2020, Aojie Technology achieved revenue of 1.081 billion yuan, an increase of 171.64% year-on-year, of which communication chip revenue accounted for as much as 70%.
Aojie Technology has been promoting the research and development of 5G chips, in the prospectus, Aojie Technology mentioned: "The company has completed the basic functional test of baseband communication and supporting RF chips. After testing, the company's first 5G chip has a peak downstream rate of 4.5 Gbps and an uplink rate of 2.3 Gbps. The company is optimizing the chip's power consumption, command processing rate, etc., and increasing the software and hardware adaptation to customer needs and terminal equipment applications. After the completion of the above optimization, the company will carry out the engineering sample tape-out and the mass-produced version of the 5G chip tape-out to complete the operator's network access test, certification test and mass production line test, and finally complete the finalization, tape-out and mass production of the company's first 5G chip. The company's first 5G chip is expected to reach mass production in late 2021 or early 2022. ”
Therefore, the news of the successful tape-out of the 5G chip revealed this time can be described as a natural success.
Nothing to do with 5G phones
Although it already has the ability to develop 5G chips, Aojie Technology does not have the ability to supply 5G mobile phones. In fact, most of the company's communication chips are used in the Internet of Things, and some feature phones, and there are no smartphone chip products.
In the prospectus, Aojie Technology said that the baseband chip of smart phones is more demanding and is also an extremely difficult product to develop. The company around the target market for technical reserves and research and development, the company's mobile phone chips are mainly used in functional machines, has not yet formed a smart phone baseband chip revenue. It is expected that the company's new generation of smart phone chip products will still take 3 to 5 years from the beginning of the project to product design, mass production and commercialization.
Therefore, the new 5G chips, after moving from tape-out to commercialization, will be mainly used for IoT terminal devices. For the smartphone industry, Aojie Technology still has a long way to go. The domestic smartphone industry is still heavily dependent on the chip supply of Qualcomm and MediaTek, as well as the rapidly growing Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui.
According to the data, in 2021, Zhanrui smartphone chip shipments achieved three consecutive quarters of growth, and the global market share reached 10% in the third quarter. At the same time, Zhan Rui successfully expanded the brand customer base, in addition to glory, realme, Motorola, ZTE, TRANSSION, etc., Zhan Rui products have also entered the Samsung Galaxy A series.
In the field of Internet of Things, Aojie Technology has successfully grabbed a lot of share, and in the 4G era, Aojie Technology has entered the world's leading communication module manufacturers such as Quectel Communications. According to IDC China's forecast of the scale of domestic IoT spending, by 2025, the scale of domestic IoT spending will reach $306.98 billion, showing a rapid growth trend. Aojie Technology pointed out that in 2020, domestic module manufacturers have collectively occupied 60% of the global market share. The company has entered the supply chain of domestic mainstream module manufacturers, and the company has great growth potential in the cellular Internet of Things market.
Comparison of the module customer base of Aojie Technology and major communication chip suppliers
Like smartphones, the Internet of Things has also entered the 5G era, and many industries have introduced 5G technology to promote digital transformation. The successful tape-out 5G chip of Aojie Technology is expected to win a place in the big market of 5G-enabled industry applications in the future, which will also play an important role in the prosperity and development of China's 5G industry chain. (C114 Namsan)