Strive to open up the entire industry chain of R&D and manufacturing as soon as possible——
The U.S. ban takes effect, Huawei steps up its internal strength
Economic Daily·China Economic Net reporter Huang Xin
On September 15, the US ban on Huawei took effect.
This means that TSMC, Qualcomm, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and other companies will no longer supply Huawei with chips and "parts containing American technology."
Facing the pressure of supply interruption in the industry chain, what should Huawei do?
Encountered by the United States "siege and intercept"
In May of this year, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce announced that it would strictly restrict Huawei's use of US technology and software to design and manufacture semiconductor chips.
In August, the U.S. Department of Commerce further tightened restrictions on Huawei’s access to U.S. technology, and included Huawei’s 38 subsidiaries in 21 countries on the “Entity List”.
Zhong Xinlong, a senior consultant at the Institute of Information and Software Industry of CCID Think Tank, explained to the Economic Daily reporter that from the perspective of the actual implementation of the ban, from September 15 onwards, all semiconductor companies that use American enterprise production equipment, software and design and production ( The previous technical limit was 25%, which dropped to 10% in December last year, and now it has become 0), and it is not allowed to supply Huawei without the approval of the US government.
This means that companies that use any technology in the United States to produce chips cannot cooperate with Huawei in any form, nor can they sell chips to Huawei, completely cutting off all the ways that Huawei seeks OEM manufacturing from outsiders to purchase finished chips.
Under the barbaric ban, major chip manufacturers such as TSMC, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Micron have all announced that they will not be able to continue to supply Huawei after September 15.
According to a report from South Korean media on September 9, Samsung and SK Hynix, the two major storage chip giants, will stop selling parts to Huawei on September 15.
At the same time, Samsung Display and LG Display under Samsung Electronics will also stop supplying panels to Huawei's high-end smartphones.
"It can be seen that not only computing chips and storage chips, but also key links required by Huawei's supply chain such as panel driver chips, have been "chased and blocked" by the United States." Zhong Xinlong said.
Temporarily difficult to bypass "American technology"
Many people ask, can Huawei and even China not use American technology to make their own chips?
The answer is not currently!
The global division of labor in the industrial chain brought about by economic globalization has resulted in no company being able to do everything on its own.
In addition, high-end chips are an industry that burns money for a long time and has high intellectual property, industry, and patent barriers, and it cannot be broken in a single day.
So far, what Huawei has broken through is only in the field of chip design, and custom development on the ARM public version architecture.
Of course, not only Huawei, but also the chips of giants such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung have to be customized and developed on this architecture.
It can be said that the ARM architecture has a global monopoly in the field of mobile computing.
What is more noteworthy is that the US chip manufacturer NVIDIA recently announced that it will acquire ARM at a price of 40 billion US dollars.
If this merger and acquisition land, it will lead to a further increase in the ability of the United States to restrict the Chinese chip industry.
In addition, can chipmakers bypass the United States?
Previously, industry experts said that the main 5G chip foundry manufacturers are TSMC, and its 7-nanometer process is second to none. Samsung's chips are currently inferior to TSMC in terms of process maturity, exquisiteness and yield.
Public data on the Internet shows that the majority of TSMC’s equity is owned by US companies.
Li Zhen, an industrial research analyst at the Innovation Research Institute of Peking University Science Park, said, “Although Huawei’s HiSilicon has ranked among the top ten semiconductor manufacturers in the world, it has not been involved in chip packaging and testing, manufacturing and other fields, and the development of the industrial chain is not sound. Therefore, we are currently facing the problem of being stuck. After Huawei suffered a supply cut, Huawei's self-produced high-end chips have become history. Currently, Huawei does not have complete chip production capabilities. In the future, survival in related fields is the key. "
Deeply cultivate and improve the supply chain
It is undeniable that the suspension of supply will have a huge impact on Huawei.
At the 2020 Summit of the China Informatization Conference held on August 7, Huawei’s consumer business CEO Yu Chengdong said frankly: “Huawei’s smartphone market share ranked first in the world in the second quarter of this year. If it were not for US sanctions, Huawei’s The market share should be far ahead of the first place. Because of sanctions, Huawei shipped 60 million smartphones less last year."
Yu Chengdong also said that due to the supply crisis, Huawei's Kirin series chips cannot be manufactured after September 15. The upcoming Huawei Mate40 may be the last generation of mobile phones using Huawei's Kirin high-end chips.
Faced with such a dilemma, what should Huawei do?
On the afternoon of September 14, Yu Chengdong said: Mate40 will arrive as scheduled!
On the one hand, Huawei has actively stockpiled chips before trying to survive.
In May of this year, the control measures introduced by the United States have a buffer period of 120 days. The industry believes that this takes into account the production cycle of the chip, including back-end packaging and testing.
Huawei also actively used the 120-day buffer period to stock up a large amount of goods.
At the same time, control the shipment speed in the market.
Some Huawei mobile phone dealers confirmed that it is difficult to get Huawei mobile phones, unless they are synchronized with watches, bracelets, glasses, tablets, audio, headphones and other products, and there is a trend of price increases.
On the other hand, in view of Huawei’s status as a major customer, in business, chip manufacturers are also actively applying to the US government to continue to supply Huawei.
Public reports show that TSMC, MediaTek, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and other companies have stated that they have applied for approval to the United States for permission to continue to supply Huawei.
"Huawei itself also stated that it will continue to invest in HiSilicon, improve the upstream and downstream industrial chain, and strive to open up the entire industrial chain of R&D and manufacturing as soon as possible, and provide high-end chips for Huawei products." Li Zhen said.
Zhong Xinlong believes that if Huawei wants to break through, it needs to think about the dual direction of development under the new development pattern of internal and external dual cycles.
Internally, we must deepen and improve the internal circulation system of the supply chain.
One is to continue to increase R&D and innovation efforts to ensure the steady development of traditional businesses, such as the establishment of a display driver chip and component product team, covering display driver FAE (field application engineer), display driver product management, display driver chip and component development, etc.
The second is to actively seek cooperation in new industries and new formats in addition to traditional businesses such as mobile phones, communication base stations, and electronic products, and to further cooperate with intelligent networked vehicles and Internet of Things companies to explore new industry technology service providers derived from the 5G background. Market role.
The third is to accelerate the completion of the replacement of upstream and downstream enterprises in the domestic supply chain of the supply chain system, provide technical guidance and necessary assistance measures to upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain, and complete mutual assistance and mutual assistance to Huawei's supply chain partners.
At the same time, it also promotes the R&D innovation and technological transformation and upgrading of domestic information technology and electronic information manufacturing.
"Externally, we can break through the external cycle blockade through the joint vertical and horizontal connection. Based on the long-term good cooperative relationship with many giant companies under the global supply chain system, Huawei can actively promote partners to continue to lobby the US government from the side, seeking to grant temporary licenses, New partnerships such as the appropriate increase in the percentage of American technology content and technical cooperation licensing." Zhong Xinlong said.
Speed up the construction of the ecosystem
At the Huawei Developer Conference 2020 (Together) held on September 10, Huawei's distributed operating system Hongmeng 2.0 was officially unveiled and open sourced. Huawei also stated that it will release a mobile phone version of the Hongmeng system for developers by the end of the year.
At the same time, Huawei's public data shows that Huawei's mobile application ecosystem has become the world's third largest mobile application ecosystem, integrating more than 96,000 applications, and the app store has 490 million active users worldwide.
Obviously, strengthening ecological construction is the direction of Huawei's efforts in order to alleviate the negative effects of the United States' supply cut.
Zhong Xinlong also believes that it is necessary to fully promote the construction and improvement of Huawei's ecosystem, on the one hand, accelerate the release process of the Hongmeng OS2.0 system and EMUI11, and strengthen the operating system in smart home devices, the Internet of Things, mobile phones, and smart wearable devices. On the other hand, expand the construction of Huawei's ecosystem based on the Hongmeng system, serve more overseas users, and enhance the overall competitiveness of the company in the world.
"We believe that while Huawei continues to seek other breakthroughs in the 5G era, it will also create a more complete ecosystem." Li Zhen said.