The Qualcomm anti-monopoly case is a life-saving straw for domestic chips?

Qualcomm faces an anti-monopoly investigation in China, which will not bring much benefit to local chip makers in the short term.

Let's take a look at a set of data. In the past two years, Qualcomm’s revenue in China has more than doubled, from $4.7 billion in 2011 to $12.3 billion in 2013. Qualcomm’s revenue from China in 2013 accounted for nearly half of total revenue, reaching 49%.

A large part of the above revenue comes from the patent licensing fee. Since its founding in 1985, Qualcomm has been committed to research and development and promotion of CDMA wireless communication technology, and once became the dominant hegemon in 3G mobile phone chips, any CDMA mobile phone manufacturer needs to pay Qualcomm a high patent license fee. It should be noted that this patent license fee is charged according to a certain percentage of the sales price of the whole mobile phone, not just the chip price.

With the issuance of 4G licenses, operators and mobile phone manufacturers are hoping that 4G terminals will become popular as soon as possible. However, Qualcomm still has a large market advantage in the 4G chip patent. In China Mobile's 4G terminal bidding last year, the Qualcomm chip's winning terminal products accounted for more than half, while the domestic chip makers only Huawei Haisi won the bid. According to data from research firm Canalys, shipments of 4G smartphones in Greater China are expected to increase by about one-third in 2015, with more than 500 million units, most of which will use Qualcomm technology.

If Qualcomm's patent licensing fees remain high, it will inevitably increase the operational pressure of domestic mobile phone manufacturers. It should be noted that domestic mobile phone manufacturers have entered the stage of low-margin scale competition. At present, 4G terminals have entered the era of thousand yuan machine in advance.

Under this background, the National Development and Reform Commission conducted an anti-monopoly investigation on Qualcomm. The main reason is that it hopes to negotiate with Qualcomm on the patent licensing fee to create a better development space for 4G commercial and domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

For local chip makers, this does not mean how much market share can be quickly recovered from Qualcomm. After all, technical shortcomings can not be solved overnight, and require long-term R&D investment and practice accumulation.

A person in charge of a Shenzhen mobile phone manufacturer once said that their choice of chips mainly depends on two points. First, technical support, problems can be solved in time, and quality and supply stability. "In fact, as long as the technology is running smoothly, we definitely choose. But I have not seen the mobile phone chip makers that are relatively stable in China. There is still a long way to go for domestic chips."

It can be seen that the share of domestic mobile phone chips is not high, but it depends on basic skills.

In terms of enterprise size and capital, there is still a big gap between local chip manufacturers and international manufacturers. At present, although the number of mainland chip companies is large, most of them are small in scale and weak in strength. Take chip design companies as an example. At present, there are more than 600 in the mainland, but only Haisi and Spreadtrum Communications, with annual revenues reaching or close to $1 billion, are less than 20 with 100 million to 1 billion US dollars. In 2012, the total sales of China's top ten chip design companies was less than one-third of Qualcomm's.

Capital is crucial for chip companies. In such an industry with high investment and long investment cycle. According to international statements, chip design companies' annual revenues of up to $1 billion are likely to be sustainable in the long term. This means that Chinese chip companies must first become bigger and stronger, in order to have a basis for competition with international companies such as Qualcomm.

In fact, the Chinese chip industry has already taken action. Last year, Ziguang Group successfully acquired Spreadtrum Communications, and its acquisition offer for another major chip design manufacturer, RDA (NASDAQ), has also been approved by RDA shareholders. Once the acquisition is successful, Ziguang Group will be able to build a national team in China's chip industry and squeeze into the top 20 global chip design companies.

It is understood that in the first half of this year, it is highly probable that the national level will introduce policies to support the integrated circuit industry. The support will be unprecedented, and the practice of peppering in the past will be changed to support more than ten enterprises to become bigger and stronger. If you really follow this path, the rise of China's core in the next decade is expected.

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