Author｜Wei Shiwei
**
The story of home appliance core making has never lacked legendary colors.
Go back to the core building path of the three giants of domestic home appliances. There are Gree Dong Mingzhu officially announced in 2017 that it would spend 50 billion to build cores, and Midea achieved 10 million MCU mass production in 2021. Haier Integrated Circuit, which was born in 2000, has been overcoming this road for more than 20 years, adding a strong mark to the wave of domestic semiconductor production.
"Many people say that the IC design company established in 2000 has not had financing, loans, debts, and has not been listed in the past 20 years. It is a weird thing to survive until now." Yang Bin, general manager of Haier Integrated Circuits, said with a smile.
is such a "weird" Haier Integrated Circuit. With the 28 million yuan supported by the group at the beginning of its establishment, it launched China's first digital satellite TV set-top box chip in three years, and achieved revenue of 600 million in 2009, with annual shipments of 43 million, accounting for half of the domestic market. Not only that, it is also the first batch of customers after the establishment of TSMC Mainland China, with the customer code D001.
But under the background of the global chip industry, no company can face the changes of the times, and this change is also a new sail for Haier integrated circuit.
In 2017, Haier Integrated Circuit, which was originally held by Haier Group , started the restructuring. Shanghai Haier Integrated Circuit sold , Neusoft , and Beijing Haier Integrated Circuit (hereinafter referred to as Haier IC) completed the restructuring in 2021. introduced two new shareholders, Hangzhou Guoxin and Wuyuefeng Capital, and determined three development tracks: audio, display, and MCU. Haier Integrated Circuit, which has achieved independent operation after reorganization of
, is now ready to go on a new market channel.
01, Haier IC
, which grew up in the set-top box market, to a certain extent, the growth path of Haier IC in the early days was similar to that of MediaTek , and they both lived a prosperous life in the counterfeit market, but MediaTek's DVD and mobile phones were used, while Haier IC's disk was set-top box.
It is no exaggeration to say that before 2010, 50 set-top boxes were bought on the counterfeit market, 32 of which used Haier chips.
But as the country cracked down on the counterfeit market, the company gave up this big cake and began to enter the bidding market, and followed the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to develop To G-type business. The bidding market is not easy to do, and there is no other reason. Due to competition, Changhong, Hisense , Konka, Skyworth and other companies have low acceptance of set-top box chips designed by Haier IC, and Haier chips can only be produced and sold by themselves.
Despite this, Haier IC still persisted and gradually accumulated rich experience in audio and video signal processing technology in the process.
In 2008, Haier IC, as the main promoter of China's terrestrial digital TV receiving standard (DTMB) market, successfully mass-produced related chips and cooperated with the national strategy to export the DTMB standard overseas. Haier IC has won generous market returns and won the first prize of national scientific and technological progress.
However, due to the popularity of cable and Internet TV, the DTMB set-top box market has gradually shrunk from nearly 10 million yuan a year 10 years ago to only about 1 million yuan today. Most of the original nearly 10 DTMB chip solutions have been eliminated. Haier IC is one of the only two chip suppliers in the market.
Then in 2012, the country promulgated the Chinese digital audio standard CDR, and many manufacturers joined in the development. In 2017, Haier IC launched China's digital audio standard CDR chip in batches, and the CDR digital audio broadcasting track has also become an important direction after Haier IC's reorganization.
This is not an easy task. Dr. Xu Jiaquan, founder and CTO of Haier IC, told 36Kr that the research and development threshold of this SoC chip is extremely high, including core modules such as CPU and DSP, integrating RF, communication, CDR (clock and data recovery) demodulation and other technologies, which is enough to keep a large number of small IC chip companies out of the door.
02, the CDR field will be an important explosion point in the future
Nowadays, digital broadcasting replaces analog broadcasting has become a general trend. From an industry perspective, there are three major digital broadcast standards in the world, namely China's CDR, Europe's DAB, and the United States' IBOC.
Among them, the US IBOC is the private enterprise standard and is not disclosed to the public. Therefore, only DAB and CDR compete in the market. DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is the second generation of broadcasting after AM and FM traditional analog broadcasting. In June 2021, the cumulative sales of DAB terminal equipment in Europe and Asia-Pacific region reached 109.217 million.
In the domestic market, as early as the end of 2014, China Central Radio and Television programs officially launched the wireless digital coverage process. CDR gradually achieved national coverage of the three programs of Central People's Radio Station , and 400 million people in 330 prefecture-level cities across the country were listened to. In November 2021, the State Administration of Radio and Television of held a CDR promotion meeting and jointly promoted the CDR pilot to settle in Qingdao in December. At the same time, CDR, as the best emergency broadcast technology, has been included in the national emergency broadcast standard development system this year, and pilot projects have been launched in many provinces and cities.
In the view of Dr. Xu Jiaquan, CDR will become the digital broadcasting technology standard for emerging countries around the world because of its technological leadership in the DAB generation and its characteristics of digital analog simultaneous broadcasting. is now under the promotion of national policies, my country's CDR chip market has huge development potential.
In the field of public services, according to statistics from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, 690,000 new public service speakers were added in 2021. After CDR becomes the emergency broadcast standard, it will cover all public service speaker markets. At present, the front-end transformation cost of CDR equipment is about 300,000 to 500,000 yuan. A 150-meter-high tower (400W transmit power) can achieve a coverage range of 75 kilometers with a radius, which is far lower than the maintenance and power consumption costs of 4G and 5G base stations.
is in the field of vehicle pre-installation. According to China Automobile Manufacturers Association data, China's automobile sales in 2021 reached 26.275 million vehicles, which is expected to reach 27.5 million vehicles by 2022. After the forced installation of CDR, it will cover all vehicle markets. At present, most joint venture factories have reserved software CDR upgrade interfaces. Whether to access CDR depends on the number and quality of programs, so 2022 and 2023 will be a key time point for making decisions.
CDR, as a low-cost data channel, forcibly listing it as an emergency broadcast standard is an important burst point, "Our first release and technical advantages will give the company a 3-5-year bonus period." said Yang Bin of .
Haier IC's CDR chip Hi5216 supports digital-to-analog synchronous broadcast function (FM+CDR), and the signal coverage range can be doubled at the same power, and it can also ensure high sensitivity of signal reception. At the same time, the Hi5216 chip also supports Beidou differential positioning technology, which can achieve centimeter-level high-precision differential positioning, and can be widely used in public service terminals, smart speakers, outdoor large screens, commercial display screens, radios and other equipment.
Haier IC's CDR chip Hi5216
Not only that, Haier IC also has high technical barriers in the field of CDR. Among the 24 core CDR patented technologies in China, 13 of them are from Haier IC. Next, Haier IC will conduct SoC reliability design, film investment, testing and verification based on automotive application needs, which is also the main funding plan for Haier IC after completing financing. In addition to
03 and CDR, Haier IC's two major business tools
In addition to the CDR business, Haier IC will also focus on two business directions: display chip and MCU chip .
Dr. Xu Jiaquan said that display chips are also a field with high technical thresholds and few competitors. In addition to Haier IC, only MediaTek, Jingchen Semiconductor, Realtek Semiconductor, Huawei and Unigroup Zhanrui have mature TV SoC technologies.
In recent years, core players are gradually shrinking the 2K feature phone market. MediaTek is gradually abandoning its low-end product line in order to maximize profits and tilting its production capacity towards high-end product line. Therefore, the demand gap in the low-end market has been further released, which has also become the key to Haier IC seizing the market through differentiation.
Based on years of deep development in the TV field, Haier IC has accumulated mature TV and set-top box chip software and hardware technologies. By launching products with screen projection function, it has taken the lead in entering the 2K low-end intelligent market and feature phone market, which is mainly aimed at the market in overseas developing countries.
"Chinese people have enjoyed the huge dividends of the rapid development of the Chinese electronic industry, but this is not the case in overseas developing countries. For example, in Pakistan , their network infrastructure is very backward, and most people only have low-end smartphones, even button presses. In the Indian and African markets, most families still use 26-inch and 32-inch TVs." Yang Bin said that now users only need to spend $1 to make low-end projectors or TVs have mobile screen projection functions, and there is a tens of millions of application markets in this segment alone.
In 2022, Haier IC's Hi2611 chip has entered the projector market with screen projection function. In the first half of , it has completed sales of 200,000 pieces and imported 2-3 major customers. It is expected that shipments will exceed the 1 million pieces this year. At the same time, the next generation Hi2612 chip has been successfully drilled. The chip will further reduce price costs and improve performance, and add new functions including projection keystone correction to further cover the mid-to-low-end projector market.
Haier IC's Hi2611 chip
Haier IC's third track is MCU chip, which mainly adopts a cooperation + customization business model. "The MCU market is too cramped now, and the technical threshold is low. We will never compete for homogeneous competition." Dr. Xu Jiaquan mentioned that Haier IC's idea is that uses the cost of 8-bit MCUs to achieve the performance of 32-bit MCUs, further impacting the 32-MCU market, and such as motor control , RTOS industrial control and other fields.
Next, Haier IC will launch basic and high-end models of 8-bit MCUs in 2023 and 2024, further covering the low-end MCU and 32-bit high-end MCU markets.
"In the three tracks of CDR, display chip and MCU chip, our core focus is on the first two markets." Yang Bin said that in Haier IC's latest financing, in addition to investing in automotive-grade CDR development, the funds must also be used for market cultivation.
Now that Haier IC has developed to its third year after its reorganization, the company expects revenue to reach more than 30 million this year. with the launch of the CDR standard next year and the launch of the company's next generation chip products, the company's revenue will sprint towards the goal of 100 million, quickly achieve balance of revenue and expenditure, and move towards the IPO process.
