During the 618 event some time ago, we once again saw the power of Appleās mobile phones. Only one iPhone13 surpassed all other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, and it was still a high-end model and the price was very high.
The key to Apple's being able to dominate the high-end mobile phone market is the cooperation between the A-series chips and the iOS system. The key point is the chip advantage, and Huawei Kirin can compete with it. However, recently there was news that Apple failed to make cores.
Apple has also been reported to have failed.
Huawei can break into the high-end mobile phone market. Kirin chip has contributed a lot. This is also an important reason why Huawei mobile phone sales have made Apple the second in the world. It was mentioned above that Kirin can compete with Apple's A series, but it is actually slightly better. The main reason why
is slightly better is that Huawei Kirin chip integrates its own 5G baseband chip , while Apple's A series chips do not integrate it, but use another Qualcomm 5G baseband chip. The previous baseband chip was Intel . The
5G baseband chip is related to the network signal of mobile phones, which is why Huawei mobile phones equipped with Kirin have very good signals.
Qualcomm has always charged very high patent licensing fees, and baseband chips are certainly no exception. Apple, which has always been arrogant, was very dissatisfied with this. At that time, the 4G baseband chip used Intel's, so it started a global patent lawsuit with Qualcomm.
However, Intel has been unable to produce qualified 5G baseband chips. In the end, Apple had no choice but to acquire its mobile phone baseband business and planned to develop its own 5G baseband chips. For this reason, it paid US$4.5 billion to settle with Qualcomm and first used Qualcomm 5G baseband chips.
Recently, according to well-known sources, Appleās self-developed 5G baseband chip may have failed and will be difficult to implement as planned.
How difficult is the baseband chip?
News shows that Apple originally planned to use self-developed 5G baseband chips in the second half of 2023, but now it can only continue to use Qualcomm's, even before 2024. In this case, Apple's breakthrough will still take a lot of time.
It is said that Apple can make a very powerful A series chip, and it is much ahead of Qualcomm's Snapdragon series. The chip research and development strength should be very strong, and there is no shortage of money. Why can't it even make something that is not as important as the A series? Out?
This involves the complexity of the baseband chip. It is not something that can be broken through quickly if you have money, people, and technology.
5G baseband chip is not only 5G, but also compatible with previous 2G, 3G, and 4G. Each generation also has multiple modes. For example, 4G has 6 modes to be compatible with, and 5G will reach 7 modes, which requires global All compatible.
Therefore, there were still more than a dozen baseband chip suppliers in the 2G and 3G eras, and they continued to decrease in the 4G era. In the 5G era, the old chip giant Intel also withdrew, leaving only Huawei, Qualcomm, MediaTek , Unisoc , Samsung these five.
For Huawei and Samsungās own use, there are only three 5G baseband chip suppliers on the market: Qualcomm, MediaTek, and UNISOC.
I finally understand how strong Huawei is
It can be seen from this that there are only 5 companies in the world that can make 5G baseband chips, and we have two in mainland China, which is enough to show our strength. Although Huawei's chip manufacturing is now restricted, Unisoc has begun to rise.
It is worth mentioning that the baseband chip market becomes increasingly difficult as time goes by, and there are basically few new players joining. Because according to the person in charge of Ziguang Zhanrui, R&D investment alone requires hundreds of millions of dollars, and various previous models must be compatible.
To this end, we still need to conduct on-site testing with global operators, which requires a long period of accumulation to achieve.
In September 2019, Huawei launched the mobile phone SoC chip with integrated 5G baseband, which is the first in the world. At that time, Huawei released the world's first mobile phone SoC chip with integrated 5G baseband chip - Kirin 990 5G.
This is much earlier than Apple and Qualcomm. Apple acquired Intelās mobile phone baseband chip business in July 2019. Now three years later, there is still no breakthrough. Instead, there is news of failure. Even Cook is also very popular. Helpless. Before
, everyone didnāt know the power of Huaweiās integrated 5G baseband chip. Now even foreign media said: they finally understand.
Some people are still complaining that Huawei has no layout for chip manufacturing, so that Kirin chips have nowhere to be found. Now it seems that it is not easy to break through chip design, let alone chip manufacturing. It is not something that a company can do.
However, Huawei is also starting from scratch, actively helping to build a domestic chip industry chain, and striving to solve the chip problem as soon as possible. If it weren't for the chip limitation, I'm afraid Apple's mobile phone would never be as outstanding as it is now at 618!
