Recently, Lifeng Zhu, assistant general manager of Sappland Microelectronics, told a reporter from the 21st Century Business Herald in an interview: Overall, the sales situation in the consumer electronics market this year is not ideal, but currently based on feedback from downstream customers and the company’s orders on hand. , the trend has become clear.
Huawei’s 5G return is a joint effort by domestic manufacturers
The most popular word during this period is “far ahead”. Indeed, behind the return of Huawei Mate60 series to 5G is the result of the joint efforts of domestic radio frequency chip manufacturers.
At present, the communication module of a mobile phone terminal mainly consists of an antenna, a radio frequency front-end module, a radio frequency transceiver module, and baseband signal processing. Among them, the radio frequency front-end is between the antenna and the radio frequency transceiver module. It is an important part of mobile intelligent terminal products and is also where Huawei has been stuck in the past three years.
Judging from the value of filters used in the RF front-end, as the number of frequency bands increases, the value of filters in the RF front-end is also expanding. According to Qorvo’s predictions, the importance of filters in radio frequency devices has become increasingly obvious, and the value of filters has increased from 33% of 3G terminals to 57% of all Netcom LTE terminals.
According to predictions from the China Industry Information Network, in the 5G era, the application of filters will further increase, and the value of a filter for a single mobile phone will reach more than 10 US dollars. Filters have surpassed PA and become the most important component in the entire RF front-end module market.
The bottom of the RF front-end cycle may be here, and domestic replacement is set sail
Although consumer electronics, which accounts for a large proportion of the semiconductor application market, is facing growth pressure in the past ten years, the industry chain will also usher in the peak season of traditional industries as it continues to destock, and the discovery of new market demand is expected to bring Change.
Not long ago, a Tianfeng Securities research report pointed out: The bottom of the radio frequency front-end cycle may be here, and domestic replacement is set sail. The research report mentioned that Chinese brands account for more than 40% of the downstream mobile equipment market, but the localization rate of radio frequency front-end is still low. In the RF front-end, PA and FEM modules account for nearly 60% of the market size. Domestic enterprise products continue to make breakthroughs, and domestic substitution starts the next round of growth. Domestic factory inventory depletion has gradually improved quarter-on-quarter, and the bottom signal of the cycle may be present.
Lifeng Zhu told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter: Domestic terminal manufacturers are strongly demanding the introduction of domestic supply chain manufacturers. Statistics from some organizations show that the self-sufficiency rate of domestic filters is less than 10%, which means there is huge space. Currently, mobile phone brands, ODMs, etc. have high demands to introduce domestic supply chain companies.
On the one hand, this is due to the differences in the running-in cooperation between overseas supply chains and domestic complete machine manufacturers. On the other hand, as domestic supply chain companies gradually mature, it also provides domestic complete machine manufacturers with more options.
“The field of domestic RF front-end filters is still in a relatively early stage of development. Whether it is a chip design company or a manufacturing foundry, there is still a certain gap between the overall process level and the supply chain such as world-class foundries, but this is not irreparable. “.” Zhu Lifeng told reporters that some mature filter products from abroad can already achieve good results in China. “Especially in the past 1-2 years, it will be obvious that many excellent products from domestic manufacturers have entered domestic first-tier terminal mobile phone manufacturers.”
Therefore, from this perspective, Zhu Lifeng analyzed that although the current sales performance of consumer electronics is still under pressure, the market inventory has basically been consumed, and it will take a certain time for the generation of new orders to match the supply chain capabilities. As the consumer electronics industry gradually picks up during this process, supply chain manufacturers will also actively seize the market, which will mean both opportunities and challenges for every company. “We have seen that some devices are gradually replenishing inventory, and the industry environment is moving towards positive development.”
Explore new markets and seek more opportunities
In addition to deeply cultivating existing markets, it is also important to seek more opportunities in growth markets.
“Currently, the profits on the mobile phone side are getting thinner, and the industry has begun to turn to the automotive industry to find profit margins in the high-end market.” The aforementioned storage industry insiders analyzed to reporters, especially the development wave of electric vehicles will restructure the existing automotive industry chain and bring benefits to the storage industry. Come more opportunities.
Regarding new application markets, Lifeng Zhu told reporters that as a radio frequency filter manufacturer, Sappland’s application scenarios are not limited to mobile phone communications, but can also be expanded to the Internet of Things, small base stations, smart wearable devices, smart homes, drones, and POS machines. and many other scenarios involving communication signal processing.
“In the first half of the year, we have made certain breakthroughs in the fields of base stations and the Internet of Things.” He added that in an environment where domestically produced devices are developing rapidly, it is more important to develop internal skills. The future market demand of the filter market is relatively certain: it will move towards higher performance, smaller size, higher power and frequency, smaller in-band insertion loss, etc. Therefore, product performance and production capacity need to be improved in these directions.
According to reports, Sappland Microelectronics uses SAW filters as its main technical path, and extends its layout in terms of processes, materials, etc. for SAW, TC-SAW, PESAW and other technical routes. In addition, at the recent Shenzhen International Electronics Show, the company also demonstrated the PESAW series of high-performance filter products. For example, the PESAW B28F duplexer has the characteristics of high Q value, low loss, high power resistance, etc., and has passed the mainstream ODM manufacturer verification.
Compared with the relatively sluggish consumer electronics, the industrial and automotive markets are the scenarios where major semiconductor manufacturers have achieved growth points in recent quarters.
Lifeng Zhu told reporters that Sappland is also paying attention to the corresponding market demand. “There are certain differences in the application requirements and environments between vehicle-mounted filters and mobile phone filters. We are actively striving to penetrate the new energy market.” He analyzed that, in addition, with the basic deployment of domestic large-scale 5G infrastructure construction, the next step It is necessary to improve the deployment of small base stations to continuously optimize the 5G application experience. This has also become a development opportunity for filter manufacturers.
In terms of industry application trends, Lifeng Zhu predicts that mobile communications and the Internet of Things will occupy the main application scale of filters, followed by the Netcom and smart wearable markets. Small base stations are also one of the important segments of downstream applications, so they need to be actively However, from the perspective of market size, there is still a big gap between the market space of base station scenarios and mobile phone communication modules.
“With the iterative development of 5G communications, the demand for radio frequency filter devices will also grow exponentially. Taking mobile phones as an example, the number of frequency bands required for 5G communications will be much greater than that of 4G, so the number of filters required for 5G mobile phones will also increase. There are dozens more than 4G mobile phones.” He analyzed.
At present, in the radio frequency market, American and Japanese manufacturers occupy the main dominant shares, and domestic industry chain companies are actively seeking breakthroughs. “In the field of filters in the radio frequency market, domestic players are still in the process of competing for the top spot. What manufacturers compete for is whether the performance can be comparable to overseas products, whether the supply chain system is complete, and whether the product cost is even better than overseas products. Passed These dimensions seek breakthroughs in competition with overseas manufacturers.” Lifeng Zhu pointed out that equally important is the need to pursue forward design, so that the company can lay the groundwork for its technical capabilities from zero to one, so that it can respond as quickly as possible according to customer needs.