'In 2017, the total IC design sales in China are projected to be 194.6 billion yuan, up 28.15% from 151.8 billion yuan in 2016.' On November 16, Wei Shaojun, chairman of the China Semiconductor Association Design Branch, was invited by China's IC design industry In 2017, he announced preliminary statistics on the development of the IC design industry. He said although the high-end production capacity in the IC design industry in China is seriously under-represented, the proportion in the world is still on the rise. In 2017, the estimated total revenue of the industry is about 29.3 billion U.S. dollars , Is expected to account for nearly 30% of the world.
In June 2014, the State Council released the "Outline for Promoting the Integrated Circuit Industry", and set a mid-term target for industrial planning as' By 2020, the gap between the integrated circuit industry and the international advanced level will gradually narrow. The average annual growth rate of the industry sales will exceed 20% 2014-2016, total sales of the IC industry were 301.54 billion yuan, 360.98 billion yuan and 433.55 billion yuan respectively, up 20.2%, 19.7% and 20.1 respectively from 2014 to 2016 according to the China Semiconductor Association % Of growth.
It is worth mentioning that, the integrated circuit design industry has been playing a leading role in the integrated circuit industry, the design industry output value accounted for about 38% .2014-2016, integrated circuit design companies were 104.74 billion yuan revenue, 1325 One hundred million yuan, 164.43 billion yuan, respectively, to create growth of 29.5%, 26.5%, 24.1%.
According to the outline requirement, in 2020, the total sales volume in the design industry will reach 350 billion yuan and the compound growth rate of 21.6% in the next three years will be required. "According to Wei Shaojun, 21.6% is not high from the trend, but in reality, As the cardinal number grows, it will become more and more difficult to achieve this growth later.
Industry returns to rationality
In 2013, authorities started to investigate the integrated circuit industry and plan to introduce supportive policies. This year, China produced 1.46 billion mobile phones, 340 million computers, 130 million TV sets and a total IT industry of 12.4 trillion yuan, but imports The total number of integrated circuits was 231.3 billion U.S. dollars, and the industry average profit margin was only 4.5% due to the lack of integrated circuit.
In 2014, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Promotion Program was introduced, with a total investment of 140 billion yuan for the National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund. Over the past three years, dozens of local governments and a large amount of social capital poured into China's integrated circuit industry. According to China Semiconductor Investment Union statistics are not complete, since 2013, local governments have set up more than 27 funds, together with the national fund, the industry total fund size has more than 600 billion yuan.
In the meantime, the IC industry staged hundreds of domestic and foreign mergers and acquisitions, industry investment, semiconductor-related listed companies also continued to grow and exceeded 100. And, in 2016, semiconductor companies only A-share financing has more than 22 billion yuan through the merger route China's semiconductor industry is rapidly becoming bigger and stronger and has long been the mainstream voice in the industry.
'At that time, the US stock chip companies, PE value only 10 times, while the domestic is 40-50 times', a semiconductor industry veteran introduced:' Pull back to the domestic market, you can make a lot of change hands. At that time, the goal of semiconductor capital Is 12 months to achieve more than three times the return on investment, less than this number of items are not talk about.
However, this route started to suffer from various resistances after 2016 and 2017. First of all, the semiconductor capital does not understand the domestic market environment at all, and a 'headache' after a 3-year replacement of the principal can only be applied for listing, As mentioned by the above mentioned persons, the endless stream of restrictive provisions has stranded a lot of capital and too many projects.
At the same time, the foreign semiconductor industry is constantly reviewing cybersecurity and denying a large number of Chinese-funded semiconductor acquisition projects. In 2016, CFIUS of the United States accepted 173 projects, of which Chinese-funded enterprises reported a large proportion of acquisitions, 173 projects created a record high and the number of refusals was refreshed, with Canyou Bridge acquiring Lattice Semiconductor for $ 1.3 billion and China-based Canyou Bridge reporting to CFIUS three times, all dismissed.
In 2017, the U.S. security review will continue to be tightened. However, due to various reasons, capital operation in the country will not be able to make breakthroughs. The road to mergers and acquisitions in China that rapidly expanded into the semiconductor industry in China in 2014 will basically be stalled.
'In the past two years there has been too much temptation from capital, as if capital can solve all the problems, and we even forget our original minds,' recalled the veteran. 'Our mind was not that three times the return, The resources are all gathered in the semiconductor industry to make the business first, and now we are back at this starting point.
Shortage of 60,000 people
In 2016, stimulating by all kinds of upsurges, the number of ICs involved in China's IC business surged from 1,336 to 1,362, an increase of 626 enterprises. In 2017, the number of design enterprises in the country increased by 18 to 1380.
However, most companies are unable to escape the fate of the lost.Luo Zhenqiu, deputy general manager of TSMC China Business Development emotion: 'What is the concept of 1380, integrated circuits in all other countries are not so much together.
In fact, in the United States, the top ten semiconductor design companies account for more than 90% of annual revenue in the industry and more than 80% in Taiwan, China. The high investment and high-tech content make this industry a naturally high industry concentration.
In China, the total revenue of the top ten semiconductor design companies amounted to 89.315 billion yuan in 2017, accounting for 45.9% of the industry's total, a slight decrease from 46.11% in 2016. Industry concentration is still far below the international standard. However, Introduction In 2017, 191 enterprises with over one billion sales generated revenue of 1771.9 billion yuan, accounting for 91.03% of the industry, an increase of 10.06% over 2016, and the industry concentration increased.
However, the profitability of the top ten design companies continued to weaken as revenue grew. In 2017, the average gross profit margin of the top ten design companies was 28.67%, down 6.39 percentage points from 35.06% in 2016.
At the same time, the average gross profit margin of the top 100 design enterprises was 29.28%, down 1.32 percentage points from 30.6% of the previous year. 'The phenomenon of continued weakening of profitability has emerged last year,' said Wei Shaojun. This phenomenon Still continuing. '
Want to improve the overall profitability must be in the CPU, memory, FPGA and other high-end areas to achieve a breakthrough in China, CPU, memory imports accounted for 70% of the total imports.With the sharp increase in memory in 2017, this ratio is still Will further improve, but the domestic ratio of these products is 0. And, want to achieve an average annual growth rate of 21.6% of the market, Chinese enterprises must also fill these long-term gaps.
In 2017, the chip design industry in China employs about 140,000 people, generating revenue of 194.6 billion yuan and the per-capita output value of 1.39 million yuan, or about 210,000 U.S. dollars, which is a relatively high per-capita output value in recent years In contrast, in FY16, Qualcomm's 30,500 employees generated a total revenue of 22.3 billion U.S. dollars and a per capita GDP of 731,000 U.S. dollars, 3.5 times the number of employees in China.
According to Wei Shaojun, if we are to maintain the current output per capita and achieve the goal of 2020 by 280,000 employees, the total number of graduates that can be trained by universities and colleges in China up to 2020 will not exceed 80,000 and there will be a gap of 60,000 or more. '
This is only a shortfall in calculating the number of qualified personnel. If the quality of personnel is taken into consideration, the gap will further widen. He said: 'We are now short of money, lack of market and lack of talent.'