Midea joins hands with Sanan Integrated Circuit to enter the third-generation semiconductor industry

Source: Content from "China Securities Journal", thank you.

On March 26, Midea Group announced a strategic partnership with Sanan Integrated Circuit, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sanan Optoelectronics. The two parties will jointly establish a "Third-Generation Semiconductor Joint Laboratory" to jointly promote the innovative development of third-generation semiconductor power devices and accelerate the introduction of domestic chips into the white goods industry.

Midea Group has been actively looking for domestic suppliers of alternative solutions for third-generation semiconductors in the white goods field, as well as new application scenarios for third-generation semiconductors. Midea Group chose to cooperate strategically with Sanan Integrated Circuit, mainly because it values ​​Sanan Integrated Circuit's advantages in the field of compound semiconductors. In the future, the cooperation between the two parties will focus on the research and development of GaN (gallium nitride), SiC (silicon carbide) semiconductor power device chips and IPM (intelligent power module) application circuits, and gradually introduce them into the white goods field.

Industry insiders pointed out that China is the world's largest white goods production base, accounting for about 60%-70% of the world's white goods production capacity. With the development of the Internet of Things and smart home technologies, coupled with the country's advocacy of energy conservation and emission reduction and improving energy efficiency, white appliances will enter the era of intelligence, and new requirements will be put forward for traditional power devices such as IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor). Many home appliance companies have begun to seek higher-performance power device products and alternatives. For example, in recent years, the home appliance industry has replaced the traditional IGBT solution with silicon carbide power devices, aiming to reduce the size of home appliances by improving power efficiency. In the future, as the cost of silicon carbide materials continues to decline, silicon carbide diodes and silicon carbide MOSFETs (metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors) will completely replace the currently widely used IGBT solution.

Midea Group is not the first home appliance company to invest in chips. In May 2018, Konka Group held its 38th anniversary celebration and announced a strategic upgrade, announcing the establishment of a new semiconductor technology division and officially entering the semiconductor industry. Zhou Bin, president of Konka Group, said that it would take 5-10 years to become one of the world's best semiconductor companies and to become one of the top 10 semiconductor companies in China with an annual revenue of over 10 billion yuan.

Gree Electric Appliances proposed an integrated circuit design investment project in its 2017 annual report. In May 2018, Dong Mingzhu, chairman and president of Gree Electric Appliances, stated in an interview that "even if it costs 50 billion yuan, Gree will succeed in chip research." In December 2018, Gree Electric Appliances planned to invest a total of 3 billion yuan for Zhongwen Jintai and Zhuhai Ronglin to acquire the upper-level equity and property shares of Anshi Group. Anshi Group was formerly the standard device department of NXP Semiconductors, focusing on the design, production and sales of discrete devices, logic devices and MOSFET devices. Its core downstream customers are the automotive industry, and it also covers multiple fields such as mobile and wearable devices, industry, communication infrastructure, consumer electronics and computers.

*The content of the article represents the author’s personal opinion and does not represent Semiconductor Industry Observer’s agreement or support for that opinion.

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