According to a report issued by the market research group Qunzhi Consultation on June 11, due to the low demand of global terminals and the impact of pre-inventories, the fingerprint chip factory orders are cautiously conservative. It is expected that the global shipments of fingerprint chips will be about 970 million in 2018, a year-on-year decrease. About 11%. In the first quarter, the supply of global fingerprint chips was about 200 million, which was a decrease of about 26% year-on-year. It can be seen that in the current mobile phone market is becoming increasingly saturated, the competition for fingerprint chips has become fierce and the profit margins have tightened under the price war. .
Smartphone standard
The so-called fingerprint identification chip refers to a chip product embedded with fingerprint recognition technology. It can implement fingerprint image acquisition, feature extraction, and feature comparison on the chip. Apple's iphone5s first applies the fingerprint identification technology to mobile devices. The Android market has also raised a wave of fingerprint recognition. Smartphones of major brands have adopted this function. Fingerprinting has gradually become the standard and new selling point of smartphones, and it has become the new darling of the capital market. Today, mobile phones are unlocked. , Secure payment and other functions are inseparable from fingerprint recognition.
Data show that in the first quarter of 2017, global shipments of smartphones carrying fingerprint identification were approximately 180 million, which accounted for 53.7% of the global smartphone shipments, which was approximately 18% higher than the same period of the previous year; meanwhile, the global fingerprint chip was released in the first quarter of 2017. The volume of goods was approximately 270 million, an increase of approximately 60.4% over the same period of the previous year. With the innovation of parts and components and the promotion of smart phone manufacturers, the demand for fingerprint identification entered a period of rapid growth.
Demand increases sharply under fierce market competition
With the increasing demand for fingerprint chips, its market penetration rate has also rapidly increased. By 2016, the penetration rate of fingerprint recognition in China has reached 61%. In 2017, its penetration rate has further increased to 85.30%, and the brand manufacturers’ Into the game, the competition in the fingerprint chip market has become more intense.
The current fingerprint identification vendors mainly include AuthenTec (acquired by Apple in 2012), FPC, Synaptics and other international companies, Aegis in Taiwan, Elan, Duntai, Maoye, and Huiding Technology in Mainland China. Mei Ruiwei, Fei Nengge, Xin Wei, Xin Qihang, Beit Lai, Si Liwei, Chichuang North, BYD and more than 10 companies.
The above data shows that the fingerprint recognition market in 2017 continues to show a sustained growth trend. However, in the process of growth, competition has become increasingly fierce, profits have decreased, and the giant effect has become apparent. From the perspective of shipment volume, FPC and Huiding Technology have an absolute advantage. Subsequent fingerprint chip makers have obvious faults that are difficult to reach.
The traditional fingerprint manufacturer FPC in Europe has become the largest supplier of fingerprint identification chips in China because of its first-mover advantage. Brand mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Cool, Meizu, ZTE and other first-tier mobile phone manufacturers are their customers, with a market share of over 70%.
In the past two years, the share of domestic manufacturers in the fingerprint identification market has also been rapidly increasing. Among them, Huiding Technology has achieved the most fierce growth. It has almost won major mobile phone brands in China, including Vivo, Xiaomi, Meizu, LeTV, and Jinli. ZTE et al. Even Huawei, which is almost entirely FPC-based, has begun adopting solutions from Huiding and Simicro. According to statistics, the shipment of fingerprint chips in March 2017 has surpassed that of FPC, 201712. The monthly FPC was again overtaken by the meeting. It is reported that Huiding’s total shipments reached 228 KK in 2017, an increase of 37.73% year-on-year. Although FPC still ranked first in terms of total shipments of 272.3KK, the increase was not as good as the meeting. , The year-on-year increase was only 12.49%. The FPC that did not grow as expected even released a layoff report in early 2018. It is not yet known whether the FPC has been gradually squeezed out of the Chinese market. However, its damage has undoubtedly speeded up the invasion of the market. pace.
In addition, the formation of the giant chip maker’s giant effect has continuously squeezed the survival space of the second and third tier manufacturers. Many manufacturers have been shuffled out. For example, Mao Ye, BYD, Mstar, and Dongfang have disappeared, and Elan, Xin Qihang etc. It also appeared on the last year's ranking.
The gradual saturation of the mobile phone market Explore the diversified development direction of the fingerprint chip
Counterpoint recently announced the market share of global smartphones for each quarter from 2016 to 2018. Data show that in the first quarter of 2018, global smartphone shipments were 306 million units, an average annual drop of 3%. In the first quarter, The global smartphone penetration rate has dropped to 76%. Even with brands like Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, but in the first quarter of 2018, the Chinese smart phone market has continued to decline, indicating that the Chinese smartphone market is slowing down.
The latest Digitimes Research data also showed that in the first quarter of 2018, China's smart phone market shipments fell 34% month-on-month, a year-on-year decrease of 13.4%. Since the third quarter of 2013, shipments have fallen below 100 million units in the first quarter. At the same time, the fingerprint chip company in the smartphone industry chain is deteriorating.
According to the first quarterly report of 2018 published by Huiding Technology, Q1 Company achieved revenue of RMB 570 million, a year-on-year decrease of 21.9%; net profit of RMB 19.35 million, a year-on-year decrease of 88.96%. Compared to 2017 results, Huiding sold in the first quarter of this year. Revenue decreased by 30%, and gross profit margin decreased by 4%. In response, Huiding Technology Chairman Zhang Fan stated that the decreasing trend of capacitance fingerprint shipments continued in the second half of 2017. Currently, the overall capacity of capacitive fingerprint chip products on the market has increased. Stagnate.
The growing maturity of capacitive fingerprinting technology has led to a continuous drop in the price of fingerprint chips. The profit of manufacturers has gradually decreased. In addition, the smart phone market is becoming saturated. Under heavy predicament, fingerprint chip manufacturers have begun to compete for new technologies to tap market development dividends.
The overall screen as the future development trend of smart phones has led to the constant pursuit of screen occupancy for many smartphone manufacturers. Structured light and on-screen fingerprints have become the two directions for the entire plant to choose biometric recognition, including 3D structured light technology. Technology, affected by the low maturity of the industry chain, is not easy for Android camp makers to use in addition to Apple. However, many models will use 3D face recognition to crack the news.
The report of Quzhi Consultation pointed out that the maturity of the supply chain of fingerprints under the optical screen is relatively high, and the suppliers represented by Synopsys and Huiding have already achieved very good mass production. They are end-user brands vivo, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. Pulling the project. Quzhi Consulting Statistics: In 2018, the supply of fingerprint identification chips under the global optical screen was about 20 million. The design company represented by Synopsys and Goodix was represented by Ofilm. The modular company will directly benefit.
Yang Xi, founding partner of Yan Yang Capital, said that in the future, there will be more functional products in the home to the smart direction, which requires identity authentication, biometric applications will be more and more. 'On the market Can see many products, such as locks, bags, notebooks, electric cars, cars, etc., Fingerprints can play a role in many applications. '
FPC President Christian Fredrikson also believes that although the importance of the mobile fingerprint chip business will not subside, but they are also determined to expand to new vertical markets and biometrics technology, but also actively explore more biometric applications, such as cars, Internet of things A variety of facilities, and cloud computing solutions.
At the beginning, Apple’s mobile phone market saw the fingerprint recognition technology being introduced into the development space of the consumer electronics field. Since then, it has started the expansion of the fingerprint chip in the mobile phone field; now the overall situation of the mobile phone fingerprint chip market has even set out to become a stalemate, but in the mobile phone There may be a fingerprint chip blue ocean outside.