The ban on ZTE’s ban in the global chip market is no less than the century of mergers and acquisitions that Broadcom Qualcomm has witnessed in recent months. Broad application prospects, core industrial status, and chip manufacturers’ struggles have never stopped. In technological innovation, capital Driven by the drive and national strategy, the global chip market has been reshuffled. The giants holding swords have been fighting against each other, and the latecomers who have never stopped chasing have never stopped.
M & A
Qualcomm came out of Broadcom’s takeover battle and is now caught up in the privatization of the former chairman. According to CNBC, Paul Jacobs, who was removed from Qualcomm’s chairmanship in March of this year, is making a comeback and is now talking about strategic investors and sovereign wealth. The fund negotiates and seeks to buy Qualcomm for the next two months.
After the rumors of privatization were revealed, the British chipmaker ARM, which was seen as a potential investor of Qualcomm, clarified to the CNET website that the company and Paul Jacobs did not discuss any possible acquisition of Qualcomm. The implication is that ARM does not Going to participate in the privatization of Qualcomm.
ARM does not participate in the acquisition of Qualcomm's logic, perhaps from the perspective of its business background. ARM is committed to the development of chip architecture, including more than 1,000 mobile chip manufacturers including Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, MediaTek and others are its customers.
In other words, ARM, which is in the upper reaches of the chip industry, is not just working with Qualcomm. It also provides chip designs for Qualcomm's other competitors. Participating in privatization may endanger the relationship between ARM and other chip makers.
Today, M&A becomes the key word around the chip market.
Just last month, the U.S. Foreign Investment Commission rejected Broadcom’s plan to acquire Qualcomm on the grounds of national security.
In 2017, Broadcom plans to spend 160 billion US dollars to acquire Qualcomm. Once the transaction is successful, the new company will become the absolute leader in the global wireless communications chip field. In the global chip market will also form a tripartite pattern with Intel and Samsung.
In fact, the chip industry mergers and acquisitions, Baotuan heating has continued for a long period of time. The two protagonists in the above acquisition have previously experienced a major merger and acquisition. In 2015, the semiconductor company headquartered in Singapore Avago Technologies spent money. US$37 billion purchase of Broadcom. In October 2016, Qualcomm announced that it had acquired NXP Semiconductors, a Dutch semiconductor company, for US$47 billion, setting a new record for the scale of M&A deals in the chip industry.
For a long time, under the pressure of slowing growth and rising costs, chip makers acquired new technologies through mergers and acquisitions on the one hand, and cut manufacturing, sales and development costs on the other.
On March 2nd, the American chip maker Microchip announced that it will acquire US semiconductor company Melco Simei at a price of US$68.78 per share and a total of US$8.35 billion in cash. The data show that Microchip is a global 8-bit microcomputer (an integration). The shipment volume of chip) ranked first, and the United States had high performance in aerospace, defense, communications, data centers and other fields. This transaction will enhance the strength of Microchip in the computer, communications and other fields.
Insiders believe that such acquisitions will help acquirers expand their business scope, acquire new technologies, and even beat competitors to some extent. For example, Intel’s acquisition of American semiconductor company Altra acquires the latter’s FPGA technology. Block ARM in the data center.
The International Chip Industry Association also expects that in the next decade, the chip industry will likely move from horizontal integration to upstream and downstream vertical integration. Integration from horizontal to vertical, the overall strength of chip manufacturers will become stronger, and industry concentration will also increase. The higher.
Giant
From the fall of Note 7 to S8, Samsung only took less than a year. With its eye-catching chip business performance, Samsung had already broken the fog as early as last year's 'Prince Edward'. After any tech giant suffered a storm , may not be able to live better and better like Samsung. Samsung's stand-up also became a glimpse of the profile of the chip business.
In 1974, after entering the chip market, Samsung Electronics continued to focus on memory chips. In the 1980s, Samsung Electronics took the initiative of Japan’s Sony Corporation to actively research and develop memory. In the Korean government’s release of the Semiconductor Industry Support Plan in 1982, Under the background of the Semiconductor Proposal Plan, a large number of Japanese and American engineers were hired at high salaries. Since 1993, Samsung has occupied a leading position in both the technology research and development and the market share in the memory market.
Demand for chips from customer equipment and supply chains has pushed up the prices of DRAM and NAND memory chips, which has increased Samsung's profit margin. Beyond Intel, Samsung is getting closer to the global chip industry leader. IC Insights data show that, 1993 In 2008, Samsung ranked seventh in the global chip market. In 2006, Samsung was ranked second, but there is still a big gap with Intel.
After the advent of the Apple iPhone in 2007, the rapid adoption of smart phones made it possible for Samsung to catch up. Samsung, which focuses on memory chips, has gradually gained more market revenue than Intel, which focuses on PCs.
Samsung also has a short board. In the mobile chip market, Qualcomm and MediaTek in Taiwan have a dominant position. According to a report released in the 2016 Hot Mobile Phone Chip Brands Division released by well-known running software Ann Tutu, Qualcomm took top spot with 57.41%. MediaTek and Samsung respectively ranked second and third with 20.49% and 12.33%. This is mainly because, although Samsung has absolute advantages in terms of memory and flash memory chips, it is far from being able to compete against Qualcomm in terms of system-level chips. To the point.
The market is still in the hands of a limited giant. According to statistics, in 2017 global chip output value exceeded 390 billion US dollars, but nearly 50% of its sales were divided by the top ten chip makers.
At present, companies in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Europe and other countries occupy an absolute monopoly position in the chip market. Data show that only US Intel and Korean Samsung Electronics account for more than 1/5 of the global chip market share. The domain monopoly is even worse. Samsung Electronics, Hynix, Intel, Micron Technology, and Toshiba Semiconductor are among the five semiconductor companies in the US, Japan, and South Korea, which account for almost 95% of the world's memory market. The world's top ten chip makers are located in these regions.
However, in the first echelon of chip manufacturing, the competition is still fierce. In 1965, Moore, one of Intel’s founders, predicted that the number of components that can be accommodated on integrated circuits will double every 18 months. The performance will also be doubled. This must reveal the speed of technological innovation in the chip field.
In fact, in the past half century, the global chip industry has experienced two major industrial shifts. The first occurred in the late 1970s, and moved from the United States to Japan, creating Fujitsu, Hitachi, Toshiba, NEC and other worlds. Top chip manufacturers; The second time in the late 1980s, South Korea and China Taiwan became the main force of the chip industry. After the United States and Japan, South Korea became the third semiconductor industry center in the world.
In addition to the huge volume, a perfect industrial chain also makes it difficult to break the monopoly situation.
There are two main modes in the global chip industry chain. One is the IDM integrated component manufacturer model, that is, one company covers the entire industrial chain of integrated circuits, and the other is the vertical division of labor mode, that is, design, manufacture, and packaging and testing are respectively completed by different manufacturers. While most of the top 20 global chip manufacturers such as Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, and STMicroelectronics are IDM models, this means that industry giants have absolute control over the entire industry chain. right.
Companies adopting the vertical division of labor model have leading technologies in a certain part of the industrial chain. For example, the lithography machine produced by ASML in the Netherlands has an absolute advantage in chip manufacturing.
Not only that, the wave of mergers and acquisitions that has been repeated in recent years has, to a certain extent, further strengthened the pattern of oligopoly.
successor
With the global wave of chip industry consolidation, emerging companies that are trying to gain a share in the chip market are under tremendous pressure.
The chip industry is rapidly upgrading, and the industry has a high threshold. It is high investment, high R&D, but the return is slow. The 2017 European Commission’s list of industrial R&D investment shows that Samsung Electronics has invested EUR 12.155 billion in R&D. Followed by Intel, it invested 120.86 billion euros, ranking fourth and fifth respectively among the world's 2,500 companies.
The investment in manufacturing plants is also extremely alarming. Due to the extremely demanding process requirements, the cost of factory construction is also unsustainable for most companies. According to public information, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. FAB 14 12-inch fab has invested more than US$11.6 billion.
The technical gap is more obvious. Take wafer foundry technology as an example. The world’s leading TSMC foundry technology reaches 7nm, while the largest chip foundry company in the country can only reach 28nm. .
In order to get rid of the monopoly status of the international giants, several countries proposed a chip industry development plan to help local companies catch up through national policy support. In 2009, the chip design of the National Advanced Electronics Technology Research Center in Brazil was located in the southern city of Porto Alegre. Established as the first government-supported chip R&D center in Latin America. To date, seven IC design centers have been established.
India is also stepping up efforts to develop a chip manufacturing strategy. In 2015, the Indian government announced that it invested US$10 billion to build two chip factories. At the same time, the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology also negotiated with Intel Corporation; Intel will establish a test factory in India; The name of the company is also in contact with the Indian government, the company is interested in setting up a wafer fab in India.
At present, the global chip industry is facing a new round of changes. On the one hand, the global market structure has been adjusted rapidly, the investment scale has been rapidly increasing, and market share has been accelerating toward leading enterprises. On the other hand, mobile smart terminals and chips have seen explosive growth, cloud computing, New developments such as Internet of Things and big data are developing rapidly. There is a new trend in the evolution of chip manufacturing technology. Under the new situation, the development of emerging companies will also usher in a rare opportunity.
Beijing Business Daily Reporter Tao Feng Intern Reporter Xiao Yonggang/Li Wen/Table Watchmaking