M70 appeared at Taipei International Computer Show
At the recent Taipei International Computer Show, MediaTek officially announced the launch of the first 5G baseband chip M70. MediaTek said that in 2019, the industry will have the opportunity to see the launch of terminal products with MediaTek 5G baseband chips.
At the media conference, MediaTek’s general manager Chen Guanzhou stated at the media conference that MediaTek has been actively deploying the 5G market, and has long since cooperated with major companies in the communications industry, including Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, and Huawei. Nowadays, the new M70 is launched. The chip will support 5G NR and conform to the latest standard specification of 3GPP Release 15, up to 5Gbps transmission rate.
It should be noted that MediaTek M70, like Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 and Intel XMM8060, are all 5G chips based on SA independent networking. Therefore, if you want to be backward compatible with 2G/3G/4G networks, you must also connect with existing 4G. Baseband chips are used in combination. However, Chen Guanzhou stated that independent products are good practice products, which can also help future single chip products to have better integration performance when they are launched.
It should be pointed out that, compared to MediaTek’s 5G progress, Qualcomm Xiaolong X50 is progressing faster and is expected to be commercially available in the first half of next year. Prior to this, Qualcomm has signed a large purchase agreement with mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo. Therefore, MediaTek may be able to suppress sales of future 5G chips. In response, Chen Guanzhou pointed out that 'Mainland China is still one of MediaTek's major markets and has deployed the most resources. Therefore, in the face of the layout of competitors, MediaTek It will continue to operate in mainland China and cooperate with relevant customers. It is expected that 2019 will also see the emergence of terminal products with MediaTek 5G data chips.
Chip manufacturers rush to layout 5G
In October last year, Qualcomm officially demonstrated its first 5G modem chip for mobile terminals, the Xeon X50, and announced that it has successfully implemented gigabit data connectivity in the 28GHz millimeter wave band. At the same time, Qualcomm also demonstrated The reference design of the Xiaolong X50's 5G mobile phone is expected to see the corresponding terminal equipment as quickly as possible in the first half of 2019.
Immediately after Qualcomm, in November last year, Intel also announced its 5G modem chip - XMM 8000 series. The first chip model is XMM 8060. Intel is expected to be commercially available by the end of 2019.
Although Samsung has not released its own 5G chips, this does not mean that Samsung’s R&D on 5G chips lags. On the contrary, as early as the beginning of 2017, Samsung announced that it has designed 28GHz millimeter wave RF for 5G infrastructure. The chip has been developed, and Samsung's baseband chip is mainly used for its own smart phones, so the actual progress of its internal 5G chip is not known to the outside world. Optimistic estimates, the Samsung S10 released early next year is expected to carry Samsung's own 5G chip.
In February of this year, Ziguang Zunrui announced that it has reached a new 5G cooperation with Intel, including a series of modems based on the Intel XMM 8000 series. It faces a diversified market and cooperates with multiple product lines. Based on the cooperation between the two parties, Zeng Rui planned to be in 2019. The first commercial 5G mobile platform in the second half of the year. In addition, Spreadtrum's own brand of 5G baseband chips is also under development. It is expected to be launched before the end of 2019. Formal commercial use may wait until 2020.
Industrial structure is expected to undergo great changes
At present, the global mainstream telecom operators are eager to build 5G experimental networks and promote the commercial use of 5G networks, especially the United States, Japan, and South Korea, as well as China. However, it is clear that the construction of 5G networks needs to be fully prepared at all stages of the 5G industry chain. , especially the chip area upstream of the industrial chain.
In the most upstream of the 5G industry chain, the baseband chip field, the world has formed the market structure of Qualcomm as a leader, MediaTek and Spreadtrum as followers since 3G. But now, the 5G chip market will increase more. Players' market pattern is expected to change dramatically.
Intel Corp., as the dominant PC chip, has been gearing up. In November 2017, Intel immediately announced the launch of its own 5G modem family, XMM8060, in line with Qualcomm, and reached a strategic cooperation with Ziguang Zengrui, a chip design company of Ziguang Group. Both parties will The Chinese market develops a new 5G smart phone chip platform equipped with Intel's 5G modem XMM8060.
Huawei is also a heavyweight company that cannot be ignored. Huawei announced the launch of the first 5G chip, Barron 5G01, in Barcelona on February 25 this year, and introduced a 5G terminal CPE based on Barron 5G01.
Samsung is also expected to enter the card slot. Now that Samsung has surpassed Intel to take the throne of the world's largest chip maker, it will never do anything in the 5G era. Perhaps soon Samsung will announce its significant achievements in the 5G chip field.
Industry insiders believe that different strategies of different vendors on the chip may bring new changes to the market structure of 5G mobile terminals. Terminal manufacturers of self-developed chips are naturally facilitated by vertical integration, but are cutting into the 5G terminal market. The window period is also risky. In addition, the market share in the 'global top three' market is gradually declining. OEMs represented by Chinese manufacturers benefit from in-depth cooperation with Qualcomm and gain a first-mover advantage in the wireless chip field. 5G brings new opportunities and new markets, realizing 'curve overtaking'.