Qualcomm recently investigated Qualcomm involved in monopoly and unfair competition, asked Qualcomm to improve and pay a fine of 23.4 billion yuan, the penalty caused the Ministry of Economic Affairs first proposed "deep regret" argument, the expression of the ruling did not measure the contribution of Qualcomm to the overall industry And future cooperation opportunities will affect the future foreign investment in Taiwan.
In the opinion of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, many industry elders also expressed their opinions and concerns. In less than a week, Qualcomm suspended the 5G cooperation with ITRI, causing more media discussion and legislature shelling. However, What are the details of the cooperation between Qualcomm and Taiwan in 5G? What are the opportunities for Taiwan's 5G development? This important issue is rarely discussed.
Taiwan's future layout opportunities
Taiwan 5G business opportunities in the end where? If from the key technology point of view, 5G industry has two major areas, one is the base station, the other is the mobile phone chip base station market opportunities for about 50 billion to 60 billion US dollars, as the mobile phone chip market Business opportunities about 30 billion US dollars in these two key technologies, Taiwan in the past almost no performance in the base station area, only a very sparse OEM orders; as for the phone chip MediaTek can stand on the world stage, and Qualcomm higher .
In addition to these two key technologies, the biggest business opportunity in the 5G industry is the terminal device. Among them, the 5G smart phone is expected to continue with 3G and 4G, and is still the largest 5G terminal device. With the current global annual output of 1.5 billion Of the sales volume, at an average price of 300 US dollars per calculation, the market opportunities to reach 450 billion US dollars.In addition, a variety of Internet of things, car networking applications, 5G is expected to bring more business opportunities for the extension.
ITRI Vice President Zhou Sheng-neng said that in the 5G industry, Taiwan should invest in the research and development of small cells and materials, components, processes, modules and RF front-ends in the field of high-frequency communications In addition, 5G applications have moved to a large number of things on the Internet, Taiwan can also seek development opportunities at various application levels, such as from smart meters, air boxes to smart driving, etc., are 5G can be the direction of development.
However, Chow emphasized that although Taiwan can develop a 5G vertical application, Taiwan lacks a core network. Therefore, it hopes to establish a vertical integration system for enterprise applications through project planning, combining terminals, core networks and small base stations , To fight the global market for the year 2020 show results. "However, the underlying 5G-related computing platform for the underlying SoC (system integration) chips or small base station chip, the past Broadcom, Intel, Texas Instruments have been withdrawn, MediaTek also does not develop the only Qualcomm can provide, so if Taiwan does not work together Qualcomm chips, other technologies, software, no matter how good, I am afraid it is useless. "
Zhou Sheng-neng is currently the executor of the ITRI's 5G small base station co-operating with Qualcomm. He said the plan has been implemented for several months and is expected to deliver results in half a year.
However, if we focus on the future business opportunities of 5G small base stations, the market is currently estimated to be up to about 2 billion U.S. dollars, not too large in size, accounting for only 30% of the total base stations of 60 billion U.S. dollars. In addition, The market for small base stations was not up. The main reason was that mainstream large-scale base station operators such as Reliance and Nokia did not support it. Taiwan has Zhonglei, Mingtai, Hutchison, Zhiyi and Hon Hai among them.
Yang Zhengren, co-founder of the text science and technology, said that the structure of the global 5G telecom industry has changed. In the past 3G and 4G era, there were opportunities to develop telecom systems such as base stations, and small countries such as Sweden (eg, Elixir) and Finland (eg Nokia) By the age of 5G, larger countries such as China and South Korea came in to control and divide the vast majority of their patents in the hands of these big powers. Under such a situation, Taiwan has even less say.
There is a lack of consensus between the government and the industry
Yang believes that in the 5G era, although Taiwan has some positions in equipment manufacturing, it is mostly a follower. For the Taiwanese industry, 5G's business opportunities are based on key components and various application levels Obviously, Taiwan's chance of developing 5G should still be "big and small" and not "big and small."
Not only does Yang think that there are even many Netcom operators in Taiwan who also pointed out that in the past, the industry rarely counted on the ITRI or the policy meeting and what good technologies could be licensed to the industry. This is even more so at 5G. Higher, and Taiwan and Samsung, Huawei are unable to cooperate, only Qualcomm cooperation is not a very smart decision, just want to get a little bit of investment in technology, the chances of success is too small.
Therefore, for the cooperation between Taiwan's government and Qualcomm, there is obviously a huge difference between the viewpoints of the general industry and those of the ITRI and its higher level ministries of economy. In addition, the more central issue is Qualcomm's attitude. At the The face of fair will be punished, Qualcomm seems to gradually 5G cooperation and fair will be the penalty, into a bargaining bargaining chip.
In fact, fair since the filing two years ago, has been interviewed Qualcomm many times, and Qualcomm also made multiple requests and objections in the process, the fair for the investigation of the progress of the system is also very deep. Qualcomm not only started with the work In its August 5G cooperation case, in August, through its commissioned analyst firm IHS Markit, Qualcomm Technologies Co., Ltd. published a research report entitled "5G Economy," stating that Taiwan was originally a key component of the ICT industry in the areas of components, semiconductors and foundry services, The 5G is expected to give Taiwan a chance to escape from its existing position and focus on the service industry with a high level of value chain.
The report pointed out that under the current industrial structure and policy environment, through 5G technology, Taiwan is expected to create a total output value of 134 billion U.S. dollars of goods and services by 2035 and bring along 510,000 jobs.
However, several figures predicted in this report have aroused the industry's doubts.A director of an unnamed semiconductor company said that the forecast is too exaggerated, because 2035 is still 18 years away from now and the forecast is not too big Real meaning, but also to output, employment estimates are too exaggerated, nothingness.
Choosing the right partner is a big challenge
In addition, Qualcomm said in the report that it is necessary to work with Taiwan partners to promote the future of 5G technology in the fields of IoT, mobile technology and computing and help Taiwan integrate with the global 5G economic interests. There should be no problems in these statements. "But the question is, Fair is precisely the means to punish Qualcomm to correct the monopoly position, otherwise Qualcomm to charge the entire mobile phone patent fee unfair competition, continue to use the Internet of things, car networking and other 5G applications, in fact, did not bring happiness to Taiwan, on the contrary It is a bigger disaster. "
The deeper issue is that when Taiwan chose WiMax for 4G, it chose to work with Intel to go the wrong way. Now that it faces the next generation of business opportunities, has it ever thought about how Taiwan should develop its 5G strategy? How to choose 5G international partners?