A new report has suggested that Unisoc will see its shipments for smartphone application processors rise by a whopping 152 percent year on year, reaching 68.2 million units in 2021. This also implies that it would be able to overtake Huawei HiSilicon as the third largest smartphone AP supplier.

According to a DigiTimes report, these smartphone APs from the chipmaker were made for use by Chinese handset manufacturers. The report added that the company only shipped 27.1 million smartphone APs for these Chinese brands back in 2020. Furthermore, it has also managed to expand its client list, which now includes the likes of Honor, Realme, and Lenovo. In other words, this would likely lead to a notable boost in the shipments of its smartphone application processors this year.

At the moment, Unisoc is also one of the primary beneficiary of 4G smartphone AP supply constraints. This is due to most of the larger smartphone chipmakers like Qualcomm and MediaTek have shifted their focus to better cater to 5G smartphones. Thus, Unisoc has even benefited from a rise in shipments for 4G smartphones that are still quite common in the world’s second largest handset market, India, along with other Southeast Asian regions and more.

Notably, the company is also expected to see its share for the total smartphone APs shipped for China based smartphone makers to cross 10 percent in the second half of this year. This boost in shipments is also expected to carry forward till the first half of next year, due to the ongoing 4G smartphone AP supply constraints. For those unaware, the chipmaker primarily relies on TSMC to manufacture its 4G smartphone APs.

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Huawei makes its own chipset but while most people are familiar with their mobile processors, the tech giant’s HiSilicon semiconductor business also makes chips for IoT devices. A new report from China says it has begun selling one of its chip on the open market.

The chip in question is the Balong 711, a 4G chip that powers millions of Huawei’s IoT devices. The chip, which was announced back in 2014 can be used in security cameras, vending machines and

Some reports say that this move may be a way for Huawei to get more revenue. The company’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, is credited as having said in an interview that it is open to selling its 5G chips to rival phone companies including Apple.

The decision for Huawei to open its silicon business to third-parties will mostly hurt Qualcomm who is a major supplier of chips to several Chinese companies such as Vivo, OPPO, and Xiaomi. Seeing the way the US has treated Huawei, the aforementioned Chinese companies will not hesitate to do business with a domestic alternative.

Last month, HiSilicon announced a family of chipsets for use in 4K smart TVs. The quad-core processors have Cortex-A55 cores and a Mali-G52 GPU. They support 4K@60FPS codec.

It is important to mention that Xiaomi has also taken an interest in the semiconductor business. It launched an in-house mobile processor SoC called the Surge S1 in 2017. The chipset powers its Mi 5C smartphone.

A couple of months ago, a leaked memo revealed that the company had restructured its semi-conductor business. A team from its chip business Songguo Electronics left to form a company that Xiaomi has a 25% stake in. This new company called Nanjing Big Fish Semiconductor will focus on the research and development of AI and IoT chips while Songguo Electronics will continue to develop SoC chips for phones. In July, it was reported that Xiaomi invested in a Chinese chip designer company called VeriSilicon and is now the second-largest shareholder.

UP NEXT: Huawei’s Q3 revenue surges 27% due to increased smartphone sales despite US sanctions

(Sources: 1, 2)

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