Reborn in 2011, 985 missing from two copies

Chapter 415: Billion-dollar chip order, a decisive victory for Qualcomm

Not only mobile phones need power management chips, but chargers also need power management chips.

Even some brands’ original charging cables have chips.

Of course, this kind of charging cable is very expensive.

For example, Apple’s original charging cable used to cost more than one hundred yuan each.

Xiaomi's original charging cable also costs dozens of dollars.

Charging cables without chips are much cheaper.

At present, it is not a big problem for a 10-watt charging cable to not have a chip, but if the power is higher, a chip will be indispensable.

A 3G mobile phone requires two power management chips P1, one for the mobile phone and one for the original charger.

A fast charging chip C1, used for mobile phones.

Therefore, Wang Yi always sells three chips together.

If all charging cables are forced to carry chips, then there will be four chips.

But the cost of four chips is too high, and most manufacturers cannot afford it, especially domestic brands.

For example, the total cost of Xiaomi's flagship, including taxes and fees, is only 1500. If the four power chips can be reduced to 150, it is almost catching up with the mobile phone processor, which will put Xiaomi under pressure.

After much thought, Wang Yisi decided to give up the strategy of forcing charging cables to have built-in chips.

Once it is mandatory, not only will mobile phone manufacturers have to buy an extra chip, but upstream and downstream manufacturers of chargers and data cables will also have to buy an extra chip, which will inevitably cause boycotts.

After all, data cables are very cheap these days.

A power management chip costs only 40, so the charging cable must cost 100. This is unrealistic and not conducive to the promotion of the x-charge fast charging standard.

In the end, Wang Yi decided to quit while he was ahead and gave up the strategy of forcing charging cables to have built-in chips.

A mobile phone + charger and three chips are enough to make money.

Currently, the power management chips of Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Broadcom and other friendly companies support up to 5 watts and do not support 10-watt fast charging.

It can be said that Xingyi Technology’s power management chip P1 and fast charging chip C1 are both in a monopoly position, and the only one in the world.

Not to mention selling it for thirty or forty per piece, even if it were sold for fifty or sixty per piece, it would still be twice as expensive as Qualcomm chips, and friendly competitors would still have to buy them.

This is the advantage of a monopoly position.

After all, ordinary mobile phones do not need 10W fast charging, but if flagship mobile phones want to sell at a high price, they have to use 10W, otherwise they will not be able to compete with their competitors.

Even if Wang Yi asked for a high price, they had to bite the bullet and buy it.

But Wang Yi did not ask for an exorbitant price. On the contrary, it is only about $5 more expensive than the 1-watt slow charging of Qualcomm and other friendly companies.

It is one generation ahead in terms of quality, but only about $1 more expensive. All major brands think that Wang Yi is a conscientious person.

Thanks to Wang Yi’s conscientious pricing, even with his monopoly advantage, he did not ask for an exorbitant price, and major brands placed orders one after another.

Not surprisingly, the sales of this wave of fast-charging chip sets alone made a lot of money.

Looking at the financial report of Xingyi Semiconductor Department, Wang Yi was in a good mood.

Customers with orders for 300 million sets: Meizu, Xiaomi, and BlackBerry.

Customers with orders for 500 million sets: HTC, VIVO, OPPO, Coolpad, and Motorola.

Customers with orders for 1000 million sets: Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, Lenovo, Sony, Nokia, and LG.

Looking at the order, Wang Yi's expression was a little complicated.

These days, many brands are still alive.

For example, Motorola is still one of the top ten sales giants these days, and has not yet been acquired by Lenovo.

Another example is BlackBerry, which is also doing well and has not yet been sold to TCL.

What surprised Wang Yi was that BlackBerry was also going to do fast charging?
Yes, although BlackBerry phones have always retained keyboards, they are also making smartphones, but with a different development path, and they seem to be resistant to touch screens.

So much so that the keyboard has become a highlight of BlackBerry.

Coupled with its unique security and global sales, BlackBerry phones are still selling well these days.

There is no pressure to sell millions of units of a flagship product a year, after all, BlackBerry is also a major international brand.

The President of the United States uses a BlackBerry phone!
There is also Coolpad, which placed an order of five million at one time.

These days, the four giants of China Cool Alliance are still as powerful as ever!
Xiaomi, Meizu and the like are emerging brands.

Wang Yi calculated that more than a dozen brands have ordered a total of 1.04 million sets of charging chips, a total of 3.12 million chips!

Even if we calculate it at 100 yuan per set, the total is 104 billion!
Gross profit exceeded 95 billion.

That’s a lot of money!
Wang Yi finally realized the happiness of Qualcomm.

Of course, Wang Yi will basically make all the money from major mobile phone manufacturers in the next year.

The only brands that can continue to place orders in the future are Samsung, LG and other brands.

Their flagship mobile phones are sold worldwide, with multiple models released each year, and there is hope that sales will exceed 20 to 30 million.

We will definitely have to place additional orders at that time.

But the possibility of other companies placing additional orders is not great.

Companies like Huawei and ZTE have impressive sales, but they are mainly low-end smartphones and feature phones.

On the contrary, sales of flagship smartphones were mediocre.

Wang Yi doesn't expect their low-end mobile phones to be equipped with 10W fast charging, which is unrealistic.

But it doesn’t matter. The money is made from the mobile phone manufacturers, and there is still money to be made from the accessories manufacturers.

Although the 10W charging cable does not use the power management chip P1, the charger does.

No matter which brand wants to make a 10W charger, it must adopt Xingyi Technology's X-charge fast charging standard, use the X interface, and purchase the power management chip P1.

If not, 10-watt fast charging cannot be achieved and the product will not sell well.

Those who sell power banks and want to follow suit with 10W fast charging also have to purchase the power management chip P1 and the fast charging chip C1.

You can’t avoid Xingyi Technology.

This is the advantage of setting standards. Once they are established, friendly competitors and upstream and downstream industry chains have to follow suit and purchase. There is no other choice.

Coupled with the monopoly advantage, the coming year will be smooth sailing.

By this time next year, when Qualcomm Quick Charge comes out, there may be some changes, but the changes will be limited.

By then, the whole world will use X interface, X-charge fast charging standard, C1 fast charging chip, and P1 power management chip.

Wang Yi took the opportunity to lower prices again and start a price war. It will not be so easy to promote Qualcomm's fast charging protocol.

Wang Yi had planned all this long ago.

This is the first-mover advantage and also a battle of standards.

It was also for the purpose of defeating Qualcomm that Wang Yi did not set a high price, but chose the strategy of small profits but quick turnover, using low prices to gain market share!

Afterwards, Wang Yi called TSMC’s Mr. Zhang again.

On the other end of the phone, Zhang smiled and said, "Congratulations, Mr. Wang. The mobile phone is selling well, and the chips are also selling well. It's amazing, really amazing!"

He was also very surprised that when Wang Yi was making fast-charging chips, Lao Zhang didn't think anything of it, and even thought that Wang Yi was stupid.

Is it necessary to develop a power management chip and a fast charging chip specifically?

Other brands directly purchase power management chips from Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and MediaTek. How convenient is that?
Until this moment, when he saw Wang Yi easily win a 90 billion yuan order and make a profit of more than billion yuan, Lao Zhang suddenly realized.

High, it is high!

This wave of Wang Yi is in the atmosphere!
"It's just a small thing. They are just small chips. They can't compare with giants like Qualcomm." Wang Yi said modestly.

"Mr. Wang, you are too modest. Even Qualcomm is gritting its teeth with envy. Haha." Lao Zhang said with a smile.

"Really?" Wang Yi was speechless. This wave indeed snatched a large number of orders from Qualcomm.

"Of course." Lao Zhang said, and then changed the subject: "Mr. Wang sold more than 40 million chips at once. Don't worry, TSMC's -nanometer production capacity is sufficient, and we will give you priority in expedited production."

"Thank you." Wang Yi smiled and said, "In addition, we need another 1 million P2 power management chips and another 1 million C1 fast charging chips. The sooner the better. I'm waiting for delivery here."

"No problem, Mr. Wang, I have arranged for you to jump the queue, haha." Old Zhang's eyes were curved with smiles.

With this wave, Wang Yi has gone from being a small customer of TSMC to a major customer of TSMC.

It is also a high-quality customer of 40nm.

These days, major customers such as Apple are scrambling to grab TSMC's 28nm production capacity. In addition, 28nm is an advanced new process, so TSMC's 28nm production capacity is also running out.

However, the production capacity of 40 nanometers is already a mature process, and there are many production lines, but there are fewer customers.

The simplest thing is that last year Apple’s chips were all 40 nanometers, so TSMC built many 40-nanometer production lines.

But unfortunately, this year Apple switched to 28nm, and so many 40nm production lines were vacated. Zhang was anxious because he couldn’t find enough new customers.

Now it’s good, Wang Yi is here!
之前就下单了3亿颗电源管理芯片P1，2亿颗快充芯片C1，1亿颗路由器芯片R1。

A total of 6 million chips, all 40 nanometers!

But Mr. Zhang was very happy.

Now, another 2 million power management chips P1 and 1 million fast charging chips C1 have been added, which is another large order of 3 million chips. More orders may be needed in the future.

TSMC's idle 40nm production lines can be directly utilized to full capacity, which is simply amazing.

There is no way. The yield rate of Xingyi Wafer Factory's 40nm process is not yet mature. Even if it is mature, it will only produce mobile phone chips, not this kind of low-end power management chip.

Since SMIC had not yet mastered the 40nm process, Wang Yi had no choice but to choose TSMC's Mr. Zhang.

The simplest thing is that with this order, Taiwan Semiconductor can be considered a major customer of TSMC.

By then, TSMC will not besiege Xingyi Semiconductor as it did to SMIC.

After all, once TSMC makes a move on Xingyi Semiconductor, TSMC will have no chance of getting big orders for Xingyi Technology's 40nm chips.

TSMC can forget about any subsequent large orders for 28nm flagship mobile phones, as this will only benefit Intel and Samsung.

TSMC's Zhang has to weigh the pros and cons. In addition, Xingyi Technology's wafer fab mainly produces its own chips, which has a much smaller impact on TSMC than SMIC, so Zhang will not lose sight of the main goal.

If Lao Zhang also took the patented technology and exported it to Xingyi Semiconductor like a mad dog like he did to SMIC, Wang Yi would also be in a headache.

As for patents, Xingyi Semiconductor can circumvent most of them, but it will still take some time to circumvent them 100%.

This is not only true in the semiconductor industry, but also in the mobile phone industry.

It is simply unrealistic to completely avoid all patents of competitors. At least the underlying basic patents cannot be avoided at all.

It is for this reason that the concept of cross-authorization came into being.

You have violated my patents so many times, and I have violated your patents so many times. Both parties went to court and sued each other. In the end, after calculating, we found that the infringement of each other's patents was almost the same, so we directly reached a patent cross-licensing agreement and reached a settlement.

If the difference is much greater, then you will have to pay a large sum of patent fees to reach a settlement.

Like HTC, the difference is too great, and they don’t want to pay the sky-high patent fees, so they have no choice but to ban sales.

The same is true for the semiconductor industry.

At that time, SMIC used some of TSMC's patented technologies, and TSMC filed crazy lawsuits, putting SMIC in danger.

Eventually, SMIC's founder, Mr. Zhang, was forced to withdraw and gave 10% of the shares to TSMC, and only then did Mr. Zhang of TSMC give up!

However, Xingyi Semiconductor is better. The 40-nanometer process is a brand-new solution that Mr. Hu is looking for, bypassing most of TSMC's patents.

There are only a few items left, but it’s not a big problem. After a while, we will be able to find new solutions and replace them completely.

Now that TSMC has received a large order for 40nm chips from Starlight Technology, and there will be large orders for 28nm flagship chips in the future, TSMC will not turn against it and take fatal action in the next year.

After all, the profit from manufacturing chips for Xingyi Technology is higher.

A year later, a comprehensive replacement plan will be available, and by then, Mr. Zhang will be helpless.

Wang Yi had no choice but to trade a large chip order for time.

This is true for the development of any business.

The semiconductor industry is the most difficult.

After thinking this through, Wang Yi felt at ease. Looking at the billion-dollar chip orders, he felt that semiconductors would always be the king.

After all, they are just low-level power management chips and fast charging chips, and they make so much money. In the past, Qualcomm mobile phone chips were sold for one or two thousand each. How much more money could they make?
The chip industry is an industry based on economies of scale and is a high-input, low-output industry.

Developing a chip is extremely expensive, and if it is only for personal use, the cost will remain high.

Just like the HiSilicon flagship chip in the past, although it was self-developed, its cost was not much lower than Xiaomi's purchased Qualcomm chips.

There is no other reason. HiSilicon's flagship chip is only used by Huawei itself, sales are limited, and production cannot be large, so the diluted R&D cost is high, and the cost is also high.

Qualcomm's flagship chips are purchased by many manufacturers, with high sales and production, and low diluted costs. The total cost is naturally much lower than Huawei's. Even if it is sold at a higher price, it will not be much higher.

It is for this reason that more than ten years later, Huawei's HiSilicon semiconductor department became independent and gradually began to sell mobile phone chips, and even flagship chips, to third-party manufacturers.

There is no other way. Chip research and development is too expensive. Only by selling to third parties can sales increase, costs be reduced, and HiSilicon Semiconductor make a profit.

If you only use it yourself, you will definitely lose money.

The same is true for Xingyi Semiconductor.

Like the previous fast-charging chip, in order to reduce the cost to around one yuan, Wang Yi had to produce 200 to 300 million pieces for a single model.

It would take Xingyi Technology one or two years to digest two or three hundred million pieces.

Now, for external sales, there are suddenly more large orders for more than 300 million chips, and another order for more than 300 million chips has been added, which directly leads to the continued decline in chip costs.

This reduced the cost of the P1 chip from cents per chip to cents, and with the cents manufacturing fee, it is only cents.

Compared to the previous price of one yuan per piece, it has dropped by 30%!

That's the scale effect.

Wang Yi has made up his mind that subsequent Kunpeng chips will be gradually sold to the outside world.

The high-end flagship chip Kunpeng 900 series will not be sold to the public for the time being.

But next year, Kunpeng 500 and Kunpeng 510 will be available for sale.

When Kunpeng 900 SOC goes into mass production, Kunpeng 700 with external baseband will be available for sale.

As long as the latest flagship chip is not sold, there is no need to worry about competitors using it in low-end mobile phones, thus lowering the grade of the flagship chip.

And restrictions can be imposed during the sales process.

For example, in addition to selling chips, Xingyi Semiconductor can also provide chip tuning services.

As long as the mobile phone manufacturer pays the tuning service fee, the Xingyi Semiconductor team will customize the tuning solution one-on-one, allowing the Kunpeng chip of friendly competitors to also unleash powerful performance.

The premise of this tuning is that high-end chips cannot be used in low-end mobile phones.

Otherwise, I will block you and never cooperate with you again.

In fact, apart from Qualcomm's lackeys, generally no company would use its flagship chips for low-end mobile phones.

After all, flagship phones are expensive, and if they are used in low-end mobile phones, the company will suffer huge losses.

For example, the year after next, when the Kunpeng flagship is sold to the public, one SOC chip will cost around three hundred yuan.

The total cost of a thousand-yuan phone is only about five hundred yuan. If you use the Kunpeng flagship, it will directly account for 300 yuan of the cost. The screen will cost another hundred yuan, and there will be one hundred yuan left, which is not enough to cover the cost of components such as lens + memory + flash memory + battery.

As long as there are constraints, there will always be many solutions.

Or just ban Qualcomm's lackeys and stop selling!
By then, Xingyi Semiconductor and Qualcomm will be completely opposed, and other manufacturers will have to choose sides!

Some mobile phone manufacturers will choose Qualcomm and use Qualcomm chips in their entire series.

Another part of mobile phone manufacturers will choose Xingyi Technology and use Xingyi chips in their entire series.

These brands follow Xingyi Technology, so naturally they will not use high-end chips in low-end mobile phones.

As for mobile phone manufacturers becoming leading suppliers?

This is not a big problem.

Just like BYD in its previous life, it is obviously a car manufacturer, but it is also a leading supplier and still thrives.

Not only are BYD's new energy vehicles selling like crazy, but it also sells lithium iron phosphate blade batteries and ternary lithium batteries, as well as motors, motor controllers, engines, engine cooling modules ECM, exhaust systems, superchargers, hybrid DCTs, silicon carbide motor control modules...

For example, BYD's three-electric system is not only used by BYD, but also by Tesla, Hongqi, Toyota, Ford and other companies.

As long as the products are well made, the price is fair and the service is good, friendly competitors will also buy them crazily.

The same is true for Xingyi Technology's fast charging chips and mobile phone chips.

The simplest one is the 40nm Kunpeng 510 next year. Although it is only a 40nm process, the process is not as good as Qualcomm's APQ 8064's 28nm, and the power saving and power consumption are not as good as 8064, but the GPU is no worse than Qualcomm 8064.

During the research and development, Wang Yi specifically made a requirement that the CPU could be slightly inferior to Qualcomm 8064, the process could be inferior, but the GPU must not be inferior!

Wang Yi knows very well that quad-core 1.5G CPUs have basically had excess performance in the past two years. Whether they can drive 1080P and play games without lags depends on the GPU!

英伟达tegra 3比起高通8064，最大的短板不是40纳米和28纳米的差距，而是GPU方面差得太大，只有8064的GPU Adreno320的一半！
That is why, although both are quad-core processors, NVIDIA Tegra 3 can only run 720P and cannot run 1080P at all. If you force it to run at 1080P, it will only fail miserably.

In fact, the GPU Adreno8064 of APQ 320 is only an entry-level GPU for 1080P. It is not capable of handling 1080P and suffers from serious frame drops.

If the xphone 2 had not upgraded to XUI 4.0, which completely rewrote the underlying architecture of Android 4.0 and optimized the system from the bottom up, improving performance by 30%, the xphone 2's 8064 graphics card at 1080P would have also dropped frames.

There is no way, Android 4.0 is just so useless. The mechanism of the virtual machine causes Android, which is twice as powerful as IOS, to only be able to compete with IOS on equal terms.

After rewriting the underlying architecture, with the help of the powerful XUI 4.0, the 2 of the xphone 8064 can run 1080P very smoothly.

But our competitors do not have this technology.

Nowadays, it would be great if competitors can adapt Android 4.0 properly, let alone rewrite the underlying architecture of Android 4.0.

In fact, in the next five years, all major manufacturers’ optimizations on Android will be negative optimizations, and will not be as smooth as native Android.

It is precisely because of this that MIUI in its previous life went from being the most user-friendly Android UI to the most bloated Android UI.

Although the update frequency is very high, there are more bugs and Mi fans are miserable.

In his previous life, Wang Yi was also a miboy and had used the flagship Xiaomi mobile phone, the MIX2 with a ceramic back cover.

At that time, domestic flagship phones were only 1999, and MIX2 started at 3299, which was considered high-end among domestic phones. After all, the iPhone 8 64G version was only 5888 at the same time.

However, the price of Mix2 is not low. It is a high-end product of Xiaomi, but it has many system bugs and is a complete negative optimization. It is better to directly use native Android.

Similarly, based on negative optimization, if other competitors follow the Xphone 2 and also use APQ 8064 with 1080P, it will be interesting and they will all fail.

The degree of its rollover is far less than that of tegra 3 with 720P.

For example, if HTC one x uses a 480P low-resolution screen, the heat will not be so serious and it will not crash.

However, it was equipped with a 720-pixel high-resolution screen and was not optimized properly, so it failed miserably when the summer weather got hot.

Similarly, APQ 8064, also known as Snapdragon 600, is this year's flagship processor and next year's mid-range processor. It can run 720P without any pressure and can run smoothly even with negative optimization.

But if it is used to support 1080P, it will definitely crash and have serious frame drops.

Unless the underlying Android architecture is rewritten and optimized from the system level like Xingyi Technology's Xphone 2, 1080P can be kept smooth without crashes.

But unfortunately, competitors do not have the strength or the courage to rewrite Android's underlying system, and ultimately fail.

By then, the performance of rival chip 8064 may not be as good as Kunpeng 510 of Xingyi Technology.

Thanks to Xingyi Technology's good heat dissipation control, precise tuning, and rewriting of the Android underlying system architecture, APQ 8064 can exert 2% performance on the xphone 1080 and can run P without any pressure.

But when it comes to rival manufacturers' phones, the heat dissipation is not done well, the tuning is not good, the system is negatively optimized, and 1080P is forced to run. The APQ 8064 still heats up and slows down, and the actual performance is estimated to be only %.

The GPU of Kunpeng 510 is similar to that of 8064. In addition, the cooling module is powerful and well-tuned, so its actual performance is even stronger than the negatively optimized Qualcomm APQ 8064 of its competitors.

Wang Yi sells the 40nm Kunpeng 510 to the public and provides tuning services. Its actual performance crushes Qualcomm APQ 8064.

In addition, Kunpeng 510 has an integrated baseband, while Qualcomm 8064 has an external baseband. Kunpeng 510 has a lower cost and a more affordable price, and can definitely grab orders for Qualcomm APQ 8064!
In order to win the quad-core order for Xingyi mobile phones, Qualcomm reached a cooperation agreement with Wang Yi half a year ago and sold it to Xingyi Technology at a price not higher than NVIDIA's Tegra 3.

Perhaps in order to disgust Qualcomm and increase orders for Tegra 3, Huang lowered the price of Tegra 8064 all the way to $3 before Qualcomm 12 was launched!

Due to restrictions in the agreement, the price of Qualcomm's 8064 sold to Wang Yi cannot be higher than US$12 and can only be executed at US$12.

But the price Qualcomm sells to other companies is much more expensive. The 8064 chip alone costs $20!

(End of this chapter)