Yu Chengdong said at the press conference that our 5g chip can only be used as 4G. Later, many media said that the problem was not on the 5g chip, but on the RF chip.
At present, RF chips are basically monopolized by foreign manufacturers, and Huawei cannot develop 5g RF chips by itself. The United States does not allow foreign manufacturers to sell 5g RF chips to Huawei, so Huawei can only use 4G RF chips. Therefore, if there are 5g chips, they can only be used as 4G chips.
What is a RF chip? In fact, a RF chip is not a chip, but a combination, which is composed of four categories: antenna switch, filter, low noise amplifier (LNA) and power amplifier (PA).
In the middle, these four categories of products are not one, but multiple. For example, 5g RF chips require more than 80 filters and 15 doors.
What is the difficulty of 5g RF chip? In fact, because it needs to support dozens of 5g frequency bands around the world, RF chips need to acquire and transmit various combinations of wireless signals, which involves too much physical and radio knowledge and various experience values.
This requires a large number of talents, technologies and patent resources, which also constitutes a barrier to latecomers, especially patents.
At present, in the entire RF chip market, the top 5 manufacturers occupy more than 80% of the market. These five companies are Murata of Japan, skyworks of the United States, Broadcom of the United States, qorvo of the United States and Qualcomm of the United States.
Of course, at present, domestic RF chips are also rising, especially when the rise of domestic mobile phones after 2010 also gave birth to the rise of domestic RF chips.
For example, mainstream smartphone manufacturers such as Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, vivo and oppo have used Zhuo Shengwei's RF chips in their products.
In addition, vanchip occupies more than 30% of the global 4G medium and low-end PA market, and hantianxia has become one of the first companies in China to fully master the mass production technology of BAW filter. Enterprises such as Ziguang zhanrui, Luoda and Weier also gradually explore their own market in the field of RF chips.
However, it is undeniable that domestic RF chips are more in the 2 / 3 / 4G field, and there is still a lack in the 5g RF chip field. This is also the reason why Huawei 5g chips can only be used as 4G, because 5g RF chips can not be replaced by domestic ones.
At present, China is the country with the fastest 5g progress in the world. 70% of the world's 5g base stations are in China, and 70% of the world's 5g users are also in China. 5g RF chip is necessary for all 5g equipment, giving birth to a huge market.
In addition, the fact that Huawei P50 is only a 4G mobile phone also allows manufacturers in the industrial chain to see the opportunities behind it. I believe that as long as we are given time, 5g RF chip is certainly not a problem. I hope that in the future, it will be a pity that 5g chip can only be used as 4G chip.