The semiconductor industry is a cyclical industry. Affected by many factors, the semiconductor industry exhibits cyclical ups and downs. Since the second half of 2018, the global semiconductor industry has entered a downward cycle. In 2019, various data of the semiconductor industry fell sharply year-on-year.

According to the latest 2019 Global Semiconductor Market Report released by the Global Semiconductor Association, the global semiconductor industry revenue in 2019 was US$410 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 12.1%. Coupled with the outbreak of the epidemic, in the first quarter of 2020, a large number of semiconductor companies suffered losses to varying degrees.

Fortunately, the imminent commercial use of 5G and the proposal of a new infrastructure strategy have greatly stimulated the demand for chips in related industries. Some semiconductor companies have seized the trend and achieved contrarian growth despite the industry downturn.

The commercial use of 5G has greatly stimulated the demand for 5G communication chips and 5G terminal chips. Although the horn of war in the 5G chip market has just sounded, the smell of gunpowder among chip manufacturers has gradually become stronger. Many companies have deeply realized the importance of mastering their own chips in the 5G era. Major chip and mobile phone manufacturers have developed their own chips and 5G mobile phone chips. No one wants to be a laggard in this new era.

However, since the BAV103 companies competing in this field are all semiconductor head companies, giants such as Intel can only announce their withdrawal from the 5G smartphone modem business and sell the relevant patents to the customer Apple. Small and medium-sized semiconductor companies in my country are not suitable to compete in this field. The 5G-related extension fields are the stage for Chinese semiconductor companies to show themselves, and the chip demand brought by 5G mobile phones is one of the opportunities.

5G mobile phones bring chip demand

The latest research report from IHSMarkit shows that global shipments of 5G smartphones in 2019 will reach 13.5 million units, and in 2020, global 5G smartphone shipments are expected to reach 253 million units department. The three-year decline in smartphone sales is also expected to end, ushering in a new turning point.

2020 is the first year of large-scale commercial use of 5G. The popularity of 5G mobile phones has already begun to take shape. On the one hand, the acceleration of the large-scale commercial process of 5G will significantly stimulate consumers' demand for replacement phones and expand market capacity. On the other hand, it will bring smart phone hardware. Innovative upgrades in configuration, function and experience have opened up new development opportunities for mobile phone component manufacturers.

Goodix Technology is one of the companies that seized the opportunity. Goodix Technology is a total application solution provider based on chip design and software development. Because it has repeatedly stepped on the development node of capacitive touch chip technology, it has become a semiconductor company with a market value of 100 billion in the A-share market.

As 5G mobile phones enter the market on a large scale, the fingerprint chip solution under the ultra-thin screen is also taking advantage of the trend. Zhang Fan, chairman and CEO of Goodix Technology, said at the shareholders' meeting that the ultra-thin screen fingerprint solution was born in response to the internal design requirements of 5G terminals.

The high power consumption of 5G chips and the increase in the number of antennas place higher requirements on the internal space of mobile phones. Goodix’s ultra-thin screen optical fingerprint solution greatly reduces its own size, opening up more opportunities for 5G mobile phones to accommodate larger capacity batteries and improve performance. The large space and the upward movement of the fingerprint recognition area are more in line with the user's operating habits, and will become a new trend of fingerprint technology under the screen of 5G mobile phone applications.

As of the end of 2019, the solution has been commercialized by various flagship models of OPPO, Xiaomi, OnePlus and other brands. At the same time, Goodix Technology is also actively promoting the mass production of optical fingerprint solutions under LCD screens.

Driven by the acceleration of large-scale commercial use of 5G and the increasing popularity of OLED display applications, the market space for under-screen optical fingerprint chips will further expand.

5G brings new machines, AIoT helps surpass

Compared with previous generation technologies such as 4G, 5G will further promote the application of wireless communication technology in the field of Internet of Things with the advantages of large connection, low latency and high reliability, which will bring huge demand for AIoT chips.

Zhou Chen, senior vice president of Unisplendour Zhanrui, once said that Unisplendour Zhanrui is different from most chip companies, and the timing of entering 5G will start from the data field, followed by the smartphone market.

In the 3G/4G era, Ziguang Zhanrui mostly occupied the low-end market, and Ziguang Zhanrui, which did not rise up until the 5G AIoT era, wisely chose to wait for the opportunity.

With the advent of the 5G era, AIoT has entered the fast lane of development and has become the core driving force for the intelligent connection of all things. But AIoT is not a simple stack of AI+IoT, but a deep integration of AI technology and IoT connection technology based on application scenarios and customer interfaces.

At present, AIoT faces three major challenges. The first is the challenge of fragmentation: the Internet of Everything brings a wealth of application scenarios and product forms, but as a typical long-tail market, AIoT has a limited volume in a single market segment, tends to be small and diverse, and the demand is severely fragmented. The diversity of needs has brought about the fragmentation of technology, and various connection technologies, security technologies, and various chips, solutions and operating systems are highly fragmented.

The second is the performance challenge: as more and more product forms and applications are launched, consumers' pursuit of user experience continues to improve, which puts forward higher requirements for AIoT's platform capabilities. Intelligent terminals not only need to have higher AI computing power, but also be able to respond to different scenarios and meet edge computing needs.

Finally, there are security challenges: the combination of AI and IoT makes security more complex, and there are systematic security challenges from chips, sensors, hardware interfaces, and software platforms. AIoT terminals not only need to face the security issues of the cloud, but also deal with the security risks of AI algorithms.

Insight into this demand has made Ziguang Zhanrui successful.

The IoT market has always been the strategic highland of UNISOC, and facing the 5G era, UNISOC has created a series of Ivy products. The Ivy series is mainly aimed at chip brands in the IoT market, realizing the strategy of AI+5G chips. Recently, Zhanrui also released a new Ivy chip, V5663, which has five major features: leading technology, powerful computing power, security and reliability, rich applications, and easy development.

From the perspective of the application logic of IoT scenarios in the future, AI and 5G are complementary. AI needs to complete training on the basis of data, generate intelligence, and achieve effective interaction between data, equipment, and people. Therefore, in the end, the future must be in the 5G environment, and valuable applications will continue to emerge from AIoT.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology predicts that during the five-year period from 2020 to 2025, 5G will directly drive the total economic output of 10.6 trillion yuan and directly create an economic added value of 3.3 trillion yuan. Such a huge economic output value will become my country's chip A catalyst for the rise of enterprises.