As one of the world’s largest smartphone markets, China with its population of over 1 billion reflects several of the future trends that we may see in the smartphone industry, with one of them being the brand of the SoC (System on a Chip) used in our smartphones.

As we are almost halfway into 2022, data analytics firm, CINNO Research, has recently published a report on the Top 5 Smartphone SoC Vendors in the China market for Q1 2022, and it seems that MediaTek is the popular SoC brand used in smartphones for the quarter.

According to the report (via ITHome), smartphone SoC shipments in Q1 2022 were 74.39 million units, down 14.4% year-on-year, and down 0.7% quarter-on-quarter. And the top 5 vendors for the smartphone SoC vendors are MediaTek in the first place, Qualcomm in second, Apple in third, with Huawei’s HiSilicon and UNISOC in fourth and fifth respectively.

Let’s start from top to bottom, MediaTek saw 30.7 million smartphone chipsets shipped out in Q1 2022, which was higher than its 25 million shipments from last quarter, and 30.1 million shipments from Q1 2022. The rise in smartphone SoC shipments MediaTek can be mainly attributed to the semiconductor firm’s strategy and chipset catalogue that it had offered in the last 6 months, which included the brand’s popular Dimensity 920 5G chipset found on the Redmi Note 11 Pro+, Realme 9 Pro+ and Xiaomi 11i Hypercharge.

For Qualcomm, the brand remained relatively stable at second with 26.7 million smartphone SoC shipments in Q1 2022, higher than the 23.6 million figure from last quarter, but lower than the 27.9 million shipments from Q1 of last year. Coupled with the ongoing chip shortage, Qualcomm had earlier announced that it will gradually shift its focus to flagship chipsets instead of entry-level and mid-range chipsets due to flagship chipsets providing higher profit margins. However, the one caveat of this strategy is losing market share in mid-range and entry-level markets, which leads to lower shipments overall but higher revenues for the company.

Apple on the other hand, had only shipped 12 million smartphone SoCs in Q1 2022, down 15.8% from its 18.4 million figure from Q4 2021. As the iPhone nears the end of its release cycle, shipments are also expected to go down as well, because consumers are already expecting a new iPhone release soon, and therefore would hold off buying the current model and wait for the next iteration instead.

Huawei’s HiSilicon continues its gradual exit from the China smartphone SoC market as the firm had only shipped out 2.5 million units this quarter, down from 13.8 million in Q1 2021. As stocks for HiSilicon Kirin are not replenished due to the still ongoing supply sanctions against the company, the brand is expected to drop out of the top 5 as late as next year or as soon as the next quarter.

Squeezing just into the Top 5 is the rapidly growing UNISOC semiconductor company. UNISOC saw shipments of 1.9 million smartphones SoCs in Q1 2022, up 1760% from 0.1 million in Q1 2021. The main cause for the exponential growth behind UNISOC is the entry-level smartphone market. As the bigger players like Qualcomm and Apple’s main focus area is in the high-end, UNISOC aims to tackle the low end with its relatively much more affordable chipsets sold off to Realme, Motorola and Samsung to sell in their sub 100 dollar device market.

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(Via)

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Earlier it was announced that MediaTek had already led the Android smartphone SoC market in 2021 with a 46% share, exceeding its rival Qualcomm, which had a 35% share in the market in 2021. One might think this spell the end of Qualcomm’s dominance in the Android smartphone space. 

However, a follow-up report to the research has been published by Counterpoint Research. The report details the price brackets where Qualcomm, MediaTek, Exynos, HiSilicon and UNISOC are leading in the race for the Android chip supplier with the largest market share.

A closer examination of the report reveals that most of the market share growth for MediaTek in 2021 came from the low-mid tier wholesale price segment (sub-$299), driven by strong demand for the Dimensity 700, 800 and Helio series chipsets. Qualcomm on the other hand dominated the mid-range and premium flagship market with around 50% market share across all price brackets above $300, except for the $700-$799 price bracket, in which Samsung had a lead with 46% market share in the bracket.

But the question remains, why has Qualcomm shifted away from the low-end markets and how did MediaTek manage to win the low-end market after Qualcomm’s gradual exit?

The report mentions that the reason behind these changes of trends in the market is because of the global chip shortage. With Qualcomm unable to secure its chip supply from both TSMC and Samsung, the company instead prioritized focus on ramping up supply for its 700 and 800 series Snapdragon chipsets, driving higher revenue and profitability. 

However, with Qualcomm not providing much value-to-money in its 400 and 600 series Snapdragon chipsets in 2021, phone manufacturers decided to switch over to its competitor, MediaTek instead for their lower-end budget devices. MediaTek managed to put out capable and affordable 5G chipsets to the market in 2021 with their Dimensity 700 to 1200 series, which could provide performance on par and sometimes exceed competing processors in the same price bracket. And with the reveal of its Dimensity 8000 and 9000 series chipsets in 2022, it is expected that MediaTek could take the stake of the higher-end premium Android market as well in this coming year.

The report also shares some details about Samsung’s Exynos, Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin and UNISOC chipsets in the industry in 2021. Besides the Samsung Galaxy S21 series equipped with Exynos, most of Samsung’s A, M and F series of smartphones were not equipped with Exynos. In the low-mid segment ($100-$299), its share decreased from 17% to 7%, and in the mid-high segment, its share decreased from 13% in 2020 to 6% in 2021.

UNISOC showed exciting growth in 2021 in smartphones priced less than $200. In 2020, UNISOC chipsets only catered to phones priced under $100. However, in 2021, realme, Motorola and Samsung have launched phones with the Tiger series SoC, citing better performance in the chipsets compared to its similarly priced competitors in the market.

Last but not least, HiSilicon’s SoCs had a 16% share in phones costing $500 and above in 2021, which was a decline from the 30% share in the previous year, due to the US trade ban. It is running on the inventory it added before the ban. By the end of 2022, HiSilicon’s market share is expected to continue to drop as its inventory gets depleted. Huawei has already started using Qualcomm SoCs in its new launches, but they are limited to 4G.

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(Via)

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Prior to 2019, there were 4 major SoC brands that you could find in an Android smartphone. They were respectively the Snapdragon series of chips from Qualcomm, the Helio and Dimensity series from MediaTek, the Exynos series from Samsung, and the HiSilicon Kirin series from Huawei. 

Huawei HiSilicon chips were class-leading at the time, especially the HiSilicon Kirin 980 found in the 2018 Huawei Mate 20 Pro, which outperformed every 2018 Flagship sporting the Snapdragon 845 at the time. The HiSilicon chip also enabled 40W wired fast charging to the phone as well as an ISP that could enable night mode that many reviewers considered outcompeted many flagship camera smartphones released in 2018.

However, after the US sanctions imposed in recent years, Huawei was blocked access to its chip manufacturing partner TSMC, and it could only use its remaining stock of Kirin chips and opt for inferior 4G Snapdragon chips for its smartphones, i.e. Huawei P50 Pocket, as the ban affected Huawei to purchase 5G Snapdragon chips as well. 

Well in 2022, after 2 years, Huawei brought great news that it will be bringing back its HiSilicon chips after its 2-year hiatus. In its official poster, Huawei claims it will be moving forward in the chip market once again in 2022, and for fans to stay tuned to the release. 

Not long after the announcement, rumors were already spreading, specifically in the Bilibili forum, that Huawei’s next HiSilicon chip would be called the HiSilicon Skylight 800. 

However, Huawei was quick to respond, and under the forum post, they commented that the rumour was false news. 

Huawei will be launching a new HiSilicon chip again in 2022 and whether it will still bear the Kirin name or another fancy new one like “Skylight” still remains to be seen.

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(Source, Via)

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Earlier this month, HiSilicon, the chip designing unit of Huawei, unveiled new technology related to the field of photography. The company has self developed a new ISP (Image Signal Processor) that is touted to offer smarter, sharper, and clearer images.

The Chinese tech giant’s chip subsidiary announced the new ISP during the China Security Expo. It is called the HiSilicon Yueying ISP Engine, which is run by artificial intelligence and will power a new generation of smart IoTs (Internet of Things) products. In other words, it is an intelligent image processing engine that will be arriving in new smart products soon. The AI in the new ISP Engine is deeply integrated to ensure image quality whilst also establishing a new benchmark for AI powered imaging.

Meaning, it will enable breakthroughs for smarter and clearer picture quality in every scene. HiSilicon also showcased the new ISP’s capabilities in a number of tests, which highlighted its super sensitivity noise reduction that users deep earning to intelligently sharpen images in extremely low light scenes. This was demonstrated in a dark room where one couldn’t even properly discern between objects and their overall shape.

The HiSilicon Yueying ISP Engine is built with an NPU (Neural Network Processing Unit) and VPU (Vector Processing Unit), both of which are closely integrated with another to better supplement different functions while offering end to end AI solutions. At the moment, it remains to be seen just how well the new ISP Engine from the chip designing unit of Huawei performs. So stick with us, as we will be providing updates if any notable developments surface.

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After several sanctions imposed by the United States, it has become almost impossible for Huawei HiSilicon to make smartphone processors. However, the company seems to be working on its first flexible OLED driver chip.

If the latest report coming from China is to be believed, then Huawei HiSilicon’s flexible OLED driver chip has now entered the trial production stage. For those who are unaware, the driver chip for the OLED panel controls the illumination of each pixel in the display.

The report also adds that the product will start mass production in the first half of next year. The driver chip for the flexible OLED panel is expected to be delivered to suppliers by the end of this year. Also, given that its own chip-making arm is developing this chip, Huawei is expected to adopt it for its upcoming products. It is being reported that samples have already been sent to BOE and Honor for testing purposes.

Recently, it was reported that the Chinese giant is trying to become more self-efficient and as a part of that, it plans to set up its first chip production factory in Wuhan to offset sanctions imposed by the United States. Earlier this month, the company also signed a deal with a Chinese firm to strengthen its domestic supply chain.

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Huawei’s HiSilicon chip making division has come a long way in the past few years. From being a tiny chip manufacturer, the company now has big plans to compete with existing rivals such as Mediatek and Qualcomm. In this regard, the company seems to be taking big moves.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 supported Cat. 9 LTE networks which was much better than the Cat. 7 and 6 bands supported by other rival chipsets. Huawei’s Kirin 930 and 940 chipsets supported Cat. 6 and Cat. 7 band respectively, which meant it was slightly below Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 in terms of connectivity.

However, according to a report from China Mobile, it looks like Huawei’s Hisilicon Kirin 950 chipset will support Cat. 10 LTE networks which will be much faster than Cat. 9. This will put Kirin chipsets at par with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon series as even the Snapdragon 820 chip is expected to support this high speed network. Other chipsets which support Cat. 10 include Intel’s XMM 7360 and Samsung’s Exynos 333 modem.

We don’t see a Mediatek chipset in the report which supports Cat. 10, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of a Mediatek chip supporting this high speed network band in the future.

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The Kirin 920 is HiSilicon’s newest smartphone SOC and has scored 38000 in the Antutu benchmark test.

Here is our tear-down HiSilicon’s latest chipset.

The chip is enclosed in a glass case, so I decided to just use a saw to get it out.

The CPU is made of quad-core Cortex A15 and uses a 2M L2 cache. It is 20mm2. The green parts are four A15 cores. The yellow one is the L1 cache. The purple part is the 2MB L2 cache. (Of course, these are not their real colors)

The section with the quad-core Cortex-A7. The yellow part is the L1 cache while the purple part is the 512KB L2 cache.

Its GPU is the Mali T628 (624) MP4. You can see four cores there. The orange parts are the register set and cache.

Its baseband is an LTE modem from Balong.

Overall, the Kirin 920 is a 28nm processor. The size of this processor is roughly the same the S800. Its CPU’s size is also close to the 4A15. The Mali GPU, though, is larger than the Adreno and PVR 5 series, and is smaller than Apple’s PVR GR6430.

Of course, just because there’s a direct relationship between the size of the chipset and capital does not mean that the smaller it is, the weaker the performance is.

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