In recent years, benefiting from national policy support, domestic alternative dividends and capital boom, a large number of chip manufacturers have been born. These chip manufacturers quickly cut in from a point to win a certain market share. But it also faces a fiercely competitive Red Sea market. In order to avoid falling into a fight in the highly competitive market, these manufacturers have to start exploring new development directions.
The domestic chip industry is really too volume, do product volume, price volume, sales strategy volume, and now even the expansion of the product line is also "volume." Where does the roll go? One direction is power management chips. Power management chip has become a hot field for chip manufacturers in different fields and scales. In all electronic related products, power supply is the most basic demand, with the continuous improvement of people's requirements for the function and performance of electronic devices, the importance of power management chips has become increasingly prominent.
These manufacturers have taken a fancy to power management chips
According to the semiconductor industry observation, a domestic radio frequency giant is seeking growth opportunities in the field of power management chips and is currently recruiting talents in the field of power management chips.
As far as RF chip is concerned, all the players are in the position of internal and external problems. On the one hand, the RF chip market is still firmly in the hands of international factories. At present, the global RF front-end chip industry has an increasingly mature industrial chain, and the industry barriers are very high. In addition, the influx of new entrants into the domestic RF front-end industry intensifies the disorderly competition in the RF front-end industry, especially the fierce competition for some homogeneous products.
Moreover, the downward cycle of the semiconductor industry has been more or less impacted by the domestic chip manufacturers mainly concentrated in the consumer market, which has caused certain pressure on the company's performance.
Therefore, in order to continue to develop their own strategic heights, RF chip manufacturers not only need to layout and invest in the upstream and high-end module products of RF chips, but also move to a higher value chain. But also to develop diversified business.
There are many domestic flash memory chip suppliers in the power source management chip market, including NOR Flash and NAND Flash. At present, the industry concentration of the NOR Flash market is high, with Infineon (the business acquired by Cypress) and Micron gradually exiting the relatively large consumer NOR Flash market, and turning to high-margin markets such as industrial and automotive. At present, the global NOR Flash market is mainly dominated by Huabang, Wang Hong, Zhaoyi Innovation and Infineon four manufacturers, accounting for about three-quarters of the market share. The market landscape for SLC NAND Flash is similar to that for NOR Flash.
At the same time, other domestic NOR Flash manufacturers have gradually increased, and mainland manufacturers have Pran shares, Heng Shuo shares, core world, etc. The market share of these manufacturers has increased year by year, and NOR Flash has also shown a trend of multiple competitive landscape. However, the market competition of flash memory chips is very fierce, and the price pressure is also large. In order to maintain rapid growth, these flash memory chip manufacturers must expand their diversified businesses and seek new growth points.
As the largest NOR Flash manufacturer in the mainland, Mega Easy Innovation has gradually formed a diversified product layout of storage, MCU and sensing in recent years, and its MCU and sensing chips have begun to generate revenue. According to its financial data, the total revenue of Zhaoyi Innovation in 2022 was 8.1 billion yuan. Among them, the revenue of memory chip was 4.8 billion yuan, accounting for 59% of the total revenue; MCU chip revenue is also considerable, MCU revenue of 2.8 billion yuan, accounting for 34%, indicating that the market demand and product competitiveness in this field is growing; And the revenue of sensor products was 400 million yuan, accounting for 5%.
However, since 2021, Zhaoyi Innovation has further expanded the production line of power source management chip (PMIC), and launched the GD30 series power source management chip (PMIC) around MCU-related applications. Mega easy innovation fancy is the TWS market segment, in the TWS application, power management chip is responsible for charging the battery inside the charging bin on the one hand, on the other hand is responsible for charging the battery boost output inside the charging bin, and fast charging for headphones. In addition, the real-time safety protection function also needs to rely on the PMIC to prevent the internal lithium battery from overcharging, overdischarge, overcurrent, short circuit and so on. TWS headphones are shipped in billions each year, which also reflects the demand for power source management chips. Compared to other independent power source management chip manufacturers, the MCU + PMIC packaging solution is a major selling point of Zhouyi innovation. This integrated solution provides customers with a more convenient option, reducing design and integration complexity while increasing system efficiency and performance.
Founded in 2014, the core world is also a company engaged in the research and development of code-type flash memory chips, which can provide a wide capacity range from 1Mbit to 8Gbit code flash memory chips, one of the most comprehensive manufacturers.
In recent years, the core world has been gradually extended by a flash chip manufacturer of MCU and power management chips multi-category manufacturers. At present, the core world provides 8-bit general purpose MCU. In the field of power management chips, on April 19, 2023, the core world released four power products, including two LDO low voltage differential linear regulators, charging management chips and motor drive chips. And also revealed that there are a number of new power products are about to be launched, it can be seen that the layout of the power management chip played a heavy chess.
The main source of revenue for Hengshuo Semiconductor is also NOR Flash, which has also developed MCU products. In 2022, the company's revenue was 400 million yuan, of which NOR Flash achieved 349 million yuan, MCU revenue was 82.19 million yuan, because its products are mainly sold to the consumer electronics field, so affected by the market, fell 24.76%. And the unit price has also declined, the average unit price of NOR Flash 32Mb capacity products with the highest share sales of Hengshuo shares fell by more than 10% compared with the same period last year, and the average unit price of MCU products fell by about 15% year-on-year.
However, unlike the strategy of Zhaoyi innovation and the core world, in addition to flash memory chips and MCUs, Heng Shuo Semiconductor chooses AI chips. Hengshuo's strategic layout is based on storage, development control, and AI layout. It is working with China University of Science, Technology and Technology to develop a memory-compute integrated terminal reasoning AI chip based on NOR flash technology, and designed an ultra-low power CiNOR chip for IoT applications. Moreover, Hengshuo is also promoting MCU-based AI application deployment and model quantification research. The integration of AI in MCUs is a hot trend in the industry, and the emerging micro-machine learning artificial intelligence technology (TinyML) will promote more and more ultra-lightweight AI algorithm models to run on MCU chips, which is also the practice of MCU giants.
In a comprehensive look, the development path of these flash memory chip suppliers is: flash memory - > + MCU - > + power source management chips or other chips such as AI chips, and eventually become a platform company.
Analyzing the development logic behind this, from the application and demand of the product, the flash memory chip usually needs to be used with the power source management chip and the MCU to form a complete functional unit. The flash memory chip stores the running code, the power source management chip manages the power supply, and the MCU controls the running of the program. Flash memory, MCU and power source management chip as the basic electronic components, the main application scenarios and customer groups are similar, flash memory chip customers also have power source management chip and MCU demand. So this is a normal product extension extension logic. And it helps increase revenue streams for other product lines during downmarket cycles.
Whether it is a player in the field of RF chips or flash memory chips, It is a good strategy to increase customer stickiness through the use of sales resources formed by their main products and packaged solutions such as MCU and power source management chips.
An Increasingly Crowded Power Management Chip Circuit
It can be seen that power management chips have become a very important step in the diversified product layout of large domestic manufacturers. Why are all these manufacturers doing power management chips? You know, in the mainland alone, there are already more than 20 listed companies are doing power management chips, including Jingfeng Mingyuan, Shengbang shares, Nanxin Technology, Ai Wei Electronics, Bi Yi Wei, Xi Diwei, Sai Pico Electric, Diao Wei, Shengbang shares, Ying Ji Core, Zhen Radium Technology, Rui Xin Micro, Si Rui Pu, Quan Zhi Technology, Tian De Yu, etc., not to mention a large number of power management chip manufacturers that have not been listed. In such a crowded track, there are still many manufacturers who are joining in, and there are two possible reasons: One is the huge market space for power management chips. Power management chips belong to the analog chip category, analog chips also include signal chain chips and sensors, from consumer electronics to aerospace, almost all electrical and electronic systems use power management chips. Power management chips account for more than half of the analog chip market. According to Gartner data, China's power chip market size in 2022 is about 13 billion U.S. dollars, is expected to reach 20 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, a compound growth rate of about 15.4%. According to TMR, an international market research firm, the market size of the global power source management chip will reach $56.5 billion by 2026, and the annual compound growth rate between 2018 and 2026 will reach 10.7%. Another is the power management chip threshold is relatively low, for the current many capable companies to enter the low-end power management chip is not a big problem. As the domestic market gradually opens the door to local power management chips, more manufacturers have the opportunity to test the water. However, as these manufacturers have entered the field of power management chips, the already highly competitive market will become more intense. Power management chips are a highly cost-driven market and are not supplied by exclusive suppliers, so in order to remain competitive, price wars are a challenge power management chip manufacturers have to face. Strong as Texas Instruments, too, had to compromise. Recently analog chip giant Dezhou Instrument (TI) "no bottom line price" news has been noisy. TI's price cut is the object of power management chips. According to the "mobile phone chip person" news on May 12, TI in China's Taiwan market, for power source management IC significantly reduced the price of 20% -30%. In order to grab the market share, it is reported that TI's price reduction has no fixed range and bottom line. This puts more pressure on domestic power management chip manufacturers that have just risen. However, it has to be said that the development of domestic power management chip manufacturers in recent years is indeed not slow, an important signal is that mergers and acquisitions in power management chip related fields are emerging. June 6, 2022, the acquisition of Juxun Semiconductor, founded in 2015, is a domestic supplier of automotive sensing chips. The main products of JuXun are power chip and signal chain chip. After the merger, the two companies will focus on the integration and integration of gauge sensor chips and power chips. On March 15, 2023, Jingfeng Mingyuan, a power management chip manufacturer, issued an announcement that it will acquire a 38.87% stake in Nanjing Lingou Chuangxin Electronics Co., Ltd. The core product of Lingou core is MCU chip. The company's power management chip and motor control drive chip can form a complete set of motor drive solutions with Lingou core motor control MCU. Domestic power management chip manufacturers are becoming bigger and stronger. Write at the end Power management chips, MCUs, sensors and even flash memory chips, the combined layout of multiple product lines has become a road that domestic chip manufacturers have to take, because everyone is moving toward this trend. This combination of multiple product lines will also be a big move for them to hedge their risk. With the continuous expansion and upgrading of demand changes, supply changes and application scenarios, different business climbing periods and explosive periods can be alternately superimposed, so as to achieve long-term stable and sustained growth. However, this similar development path will test their performance, power consumption and cost performance. The end of the universe or volume!
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Logic chips, power supply chips, Integrated circuits!