Understanding the competition landscape of BLE chips in one article
Latest update time：2021-09-02 22:16
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Network applications are developing rapidly, and data transmission scenarios are becoming increasingly diverse. According to reports from We Are Social and Hootsuite, by the end of 2018, the number of global Internet users exceeded 4.3 billion, accounting for about 57% of the world's population. More than half of the world's population has access to the Internet, thanks to the rapid development of Internet information technology and the widespread popularity of smart terminals. Internet users' requirements for network transmission are constantly increasing. With the upgrading of communication technology, the content and form of transmission are gradually upgraded, from the initial text and pictures to video transmission; the transmission scenarios are also becoming more diverse, from data transmission between people and between people and things to data transmission between things.
Wireless communication is divided into short-distance and long-distance transmission, and local IoT is rapidly promoting the development of short-distance wireless communication. According to Ericsson's mobile market report, the number of global IoT terminals will increase from 8.6 billion to 22.3 billion in 2024, with a compound growth rate of 17%. In addition, short-distance wireless connection is the main connection form of the IoT, and the number of connected devices will increase from 7.5 billion in 2018 to 17.8 billion in 2024, with a compound growth rate of 15%.
Wireless communication technologies are mainly divided into wide area network and local area network, which differ in transmission distance and communication protocol. Local area network wireless communication technologies include NFC, IrDA, WIFI, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z-Wave, UWB, RFID, LiFi, etc., and the transmission distance is generally 0-300 meters; wide area network wireless communication technologies include GPRS, LoRa, NB-IoT, etc., and the effective transmission distance is at the kilometer level. Bluetooth is one of the most important local area network (short-range) wireless communication methods, suitable for communications with a coverage distance of less than 100 meters and a small amount of data transmission.
Bluetooth achieves a perfect combination of power consumption, cost, and functionality, and has advantages in application development. Among the major LAN wireless communication technologies, NFC is mainly used for near-field identification and communication, and its application field is relatively limited; WIFI has fast transmission speed and seamless connection with the Internet, but it has high power consumption and no advantages in application development; ZigBee's biggest highlight is that it can realize mesh networking, which has advantages in large-scale networked device control, but it requires an additional gateway to connect with smartphones. Bluetooth has great advantages in transmission distance (up to 300 meters), power consumption (working and standby power consumption can be achieved at 10mA and several uA levels respectively), cost, efficiency, and security, and integrates the functions of other communication technologies, such as mesh, so its application advantages are more obvious.
Bluetooth technology standard enters the 5.0 era, Mesh networking technology helps high-end low-power Bluetooth to expand the IoT market
Bluetooth 4.0 introduced low-power modules, opening the door to the Internet of Things. Bluetooth technology was first proposed by Ericsson in 1995 and was mainly used in the field of Bluetooth audio. Subsequently, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) was established in 1998 to formulate and maintain Bluetooth technology standards. So far, the Bluetooth technology standard has undergone 10 upgrades from version 1.1 to version 5.1. Since the release of the Bluetooth 4.0 standard in 2010, Bluetooth has moved from classic Bluetooth to the era of low-power Bluetooth. The introduction of low-power modules has also reduced Bluetooth power consumption by more than 90%, making it possible for more terminals, especially mobile terminal devices, to be connected to the Internet.
Bluetooth 5.0 overcomes the shortcomings of Bluetooth transmission speed and transmission distance, further reduces power consumption, and expands the application field of high-precision positioning and direction finding function. Compared with version 4.2, the transmission speed of Bluetooth 5.0 is twice that of 4.2, the effective transmission distance is four times that of 4.2, and the information capacity of broadcast mode is increased to 8 times the original; and the power consumption is further reduced, the working current reaches the milliampere or even microampere level, and the standby current is reduced to the milliampere or even nanoampere level; in addition, BLE5.1 introduces high-precision positioning and direction finding function, and indoor navigation positioning reaches centimeter-level accuracy. These performances have further consolidated BLE's position in the field of the Internet of Things.
Mesh networking technology is a key technology for low-power Bluetooth to achieve large-scale IoT connections. Bluetooth Mesh networking technology was approved by SIG in 2017. It is an independent network technology that is compatible with 4 and 5 series Bluetooth protocols. It uses Bluetooth devices as signal relay stations and uses low-power Bluetooth broadcasting to send and receive information, which can achieve multi-to-multi device communication and thus achieve large-area coverage. This technology can group hundreds or thousands of nodes and can communicate directly with smart terminals without a gateway, meeting the connection needs of the Internet of Things, especially in the fields of industrial Internet of Things, smart cities, and smart buildings.
Compared with classic Bluetooth, low-power Bluetooth has the advantages of long transmission distance, low power consumption, and low latency. In terms of transmission distance, classic Bluetooth is only 10-100 meters, while BLE can transmit up to 300 meters; in terms of connection mode, classic Bluetooth can only be transmitted in a point-to-point manner, while BLE devices can be connected to other devices through point-to-point, broadcast, and Mesh networking; in terms of power consumption, the difference between the two is huge. Low-power Bluetooth has extremely low power consumption in operation and standby mode, and can work continuously for months or even years using a button battery.
Classic Bluetooth supports audio transmission, while low-power Bluetooth is mainly used for non-audio data transmission. Based on this gap, the application scenarios of classic Bluetooth and low-power Bluetooth are different. Classic Bluetooth is mainly used in audio transmission devices, while low-power Bluetooth is mainly used in the field of data transmission, especially data transmission based on the Internet of Things.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has gradually stopped maintaining the classic Bluetooth standard, and it is inevitable that Bluetooth will enter the 5.0 era. With the continuous upgrading of Bluetooth technology standards, in order to improve the quality of Bluetooth products and promote the application of new Bluetooth versions, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group has gradually stopped maintaining the classic Bluetooth standard. In 2019, the classic Bluetooth 2.0 version was revoked, and the 4.1/4.0/3.0/2.1 versions were abandoned. In 2020, the versions before 4.2 will be officially revoked, and products below the 4.2 standard will no longer be certified. The high-end low-power Bluetooth 5.0 version will replace the previous Bluetooth and is the mainstream trend in the future. It is a foregone conclusion that Bluetooth will enter the 5.0 era.
Bluetooth Low Energy benefits from the development of wearable devices and the Internet of Things, with a market space of US$6.5 billion and maintaining rapid growth
Bluetooth is divided into classic Bluetooth and low-power Bluetooth. Classic Bluetooth generally includes three modes: basic rate (BR), enhanced rate (EDR), and high rate (HS/AMP), while low-power Bluetooth includes low-energy module (LE).
In the low-power Bluetooth chip market, there are two different chip designs: single-mode and dual-mode. Single-mode Bluetooth chips refer to chips that only support low-power transmission functions, while dual-mode Bluetooth supports classic Bluetooth transmission in addition to low-power transmission, which makes Bluetooth chips compatible with versions below 4.0. It is worth noting that the actual power consumption of dual-mode low-power Bluetooth is closer to that of classic Bluetooth.
Wearable devices are the first market to explode with low-power Bluetooth and are currently in a period of rapid growth. According to IDC data, the annual shipment of wearable devices is expected to exceed 223 million units in 2019, and the shipment will increase to 302 million units in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.9%. The growth of wearable devices mainly comes from wrist-worn devices and ear-worn devices, of which wrist-worn devices account for more than 60% of shipments, mainly smart watches and bracelets, which are often used in health, sports and other scenarios. As peripheral devices for mobile terminals such as mobile phones, data transmission is its main function, and it has high requirements for power consumption.
The IoT market has huge room for growth, and the requirements for power consumption and networking capabilities are becoming more stringent. Bluetooth low energy will be an important player in local IoT. Bluetooth low energy has the advantages of low cost, low power consumption, and Mesh networking that can connect thousands of nodes. It is useful in both single devices and system construction. Therefore, Bluetooth low energy is an indispensable player in local IoT application scenarios.
Specifically, the future space for the explosion of low-power Bluetooth in the Internet of Things is concentrated in the fields of smart home, smart building, smart city, smart industry, etc. According to the data of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the annual shipment of Bluetooth smart home devices is expected to reach 1.15 billion in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 59%; the annual shipment of Bluetooth smart building devices is expected to reach 374 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 46%; the annual shipment of Bluetooth smart city devices is expected to reach 197 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 40%; the annual shipment of Bluetooth smart industrial devices is expected to reach 278 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 40%.
The low-power Bluetooth market will continue to grow. In 2023, the global low-power Bluetooth market is expected to reach US$6.7 billion, with a compound growth rate of 7.6% from 2018 to 2023. According to the Bluetooth Technology Alliance SIG, the shipments of low-power single-mode Bluetooth in 2018 were 540 million, and the shipments of dual-mode Bluetooth were 2.7 billion, with a total BLE market size of approximately US$4.5 billion. It is expected that by 2023, more than 90% of Bluetooth devices in the world will use low-power Bluetooth chips, and about one-third of devices will use single-mode low-power Bluetooth. The shipment volume is expected to reach 1.6 billion, and the market space will reach US$2.2 billion; in order to fully utilize the advantages of Bluetooth technology, dual-mode Bluetooth is replacing classic Bluetooth. It is expected that the shipment volume of dual-mode Bluetooth chips will reach 3.2 billion in 2023, with a market space of up to US$4.5 billion. The overall compound growth rate of low-power Bluetooth from 2018 to 2023 will reach 7.6%.
Foreign manufacturers seize the high-end BLE market opportunity, and domestic manufacturers also begin to gradually deploy low-power Bluetooth
The BLE field has not yet fully formed an oligopoly pattern. Foreign manufacturers have entered the market earlier and occupy a major market share
The global low-power Bluetooth enterprises present a fully competitive pattern. Foreign manufacturers have laid out their layout earlier and have a relatively large market share. Since the introduction of low-power Bluetooth in 2010, foreign manufacturers have led the construction of low-power Bluetooth. So far, the world's major low-power Bluetooth manufacturers include Nordic, Dialog, TI, ST, Cypress, Silicon lab, Microchip, Toshiba, Tailingwei, etc. In addition to Tailingwei, other manufacturers are mostly from Europe, the United States and Japan, occupying the high-end BLE chip market. Among them, Nordic from Norway has become the leader in the BLE field with a market share of about 40%. Tailingwei is the only domestic manufacturer with a high market share in this field. At present, its products are widely used in the lighting field. Other manufacturers are mostly low-end homogeneous products in the Bluetooth field.
Foreign manufacturers represented by Nordic have made early layouts in the field of low power consumption and have mastered the technology and market opportunities. Early low-power Bluetooth (or "Bluetooth Smart") was jointly developed by Nokia and Nordic, included in the Bluetooth 4.0 standard and released. Therefore, Nordic also contributed core technology and expertise to the low-power Bluetooth standard and became the originator of technology. Based on its technological advantages, Nordic accurately grasps market trends and rapidly promotes the research and development of low-power Bluetooth chips. In 2012, it released the first generation of ultra-low-power Bluetooth nRF51 series. In 2015, it successfully launched the nRF52 series of low-power chips, and promptly upgraded these two series of Bluetooth to version 5.0 and above, occupying the market opportunity. In 2018, Nordic's low-power Bluetooth chip revenue was US$185 million, with an annual growth rate of 23.3% and a market share of about 40%.
The gradual penetration of segmented application areas has helped Nordic complete market development. As early as 2013, Nordic had a place in the computer accessories market, which provided a good transition for its low-power Bluetooth applications. On this basis, Nordic targeted the Internet of Things market and continued to develop the application of low-power Bluetooth in the segmented fields of the Internet of Things, especially in the wearable device, smart home, and healthcare equipment markets, and has won the favor of many customers, occupying a leading position in the market. Nordic's customer divisions are in Europe, America, and Asia Pacific; in 2018, the business revenue brought by customers in the Asia-Pacific region reached 75%, and China is one of the main customers.
Dialog is the second largest low-power Bluetooth chip company after Nordic. As of 2018, Dialog's low-power Bluetooth chip shipments exceeded 200 million. In 2018, Dialog's low-power Bluetooth business revenue was approximately US$52 million, with an annual growth rate of 21% and a market share of approximately 11%. The company began to develop low-power Bluetooth in 2013, shipped the first generation of low-power Bluetooth in 2015, and gradually formed a complete product portfolio. In 2016, the second generation of low-power Bluetooth was shipped, and it was upgraded to Bluetooth 5.0 in 2017. Its products are mainly used in wearable devices and smart homes.
It can be seen that foreign companies that occupy a certain market share started early in the research and development of low-power Bluetooth and have close ties with downstream customers, which has laid a solid foundation for the explosion of low-power Bluetooth application scenarios in recent years. Although low-power Bluetooth is mainly produced by foreign manufacturers, there is no monopoly of a few manufacturers in the global market.
Domestic high-end low-power Bluetooth is gradually taking off, and import substitution has become a definite trend
As an important wireless connection technology for the Internet of Things, low-power Bluetooth has an increasingly diverse use case. Domestic manufacturers are also accelerating their layout. In addition to traditional Bluetooth companies actively transforming or expanding new sectors, low-power Bluetooth startups are also springing up like mushrooms after a rain. Although foreign low-power Bluetooth chips have an advantage due to their early development, foreign products are generally expensive and face disadvantages such as difficulty in continued development and insufficient domestic localized services, which creates opportunities for domestic companies to enter the low-power Bluetooth field.
The BLE shipped by traditional domestic Bluetooth manufacturers is generally concentrated on low-end BLE, with versions of 4.2 and below. In the past two years, they have begun to transform and deploy BLE5.0, but they are still mainly dual-mode low-power Bluetooth chips used in Bluetooth audio. A few manufacturers have developed single-mode Bluetooth transparent transmission chips with functions such as Bluetooth mesh and indoor positioning. Taiwan Airoha and Realtek were established earlier and mainly produced Bluetooth audio chips. They only started to develop high-end BLE after 2016. Some BLE5.0 products have been shipped in the past two years, but the volume is not large. Other companies such as Hengxuan, Zhuhai Jie Li, Juxin, Broadcom Integrated, etc. have gradually turned to the development of high-end low-power dual-mode Bluetooth products in recent years. For example, Broadcom Integrated, a company listed in April 2019, raised funds from the listing mainly for the development of BLE5.0 and 5.1 chips.
Tailingwei was the only manufacturer that entered the BLE chip market in China in the early days, but in recent years, more and more companies have started to start businesses with BLE. Tailingwei was founded in 2010 and is the first low-power Bluetooth company in my country. In 2014, the first generation of low-power Bluetooth chips was put into mass production, and in 2016, multi-mode low-power Bluetooth chips were born. Its products are mainly used in smart lighting and wearable devices in the Internet of Things. It is the largest low-power Bluetooth manufacturer in China in terms of shipments, accounting for nearly 8% of the world. Other low-power Bluetooth startups such as Furuikun, Juwei, Fengjiawei, Lianruiwei, Taoxin Technology, etc. are also starting up and developing low-power Bluetooth chips with a higher degree of localization in line with the needs of Chinese companies.
The transfer of chip design industry is an inevitable trend, and multiple drivers make it highly certain that domestic low-power Bluetooth manufacturers can achieve import substitution. With China's policy support for the integrated circuit industry, and external factors such as the need to resist the IC supply chain risks brought about by the Sino-US trade friction; there are also internal factors such as the huge demand stimulation brought about by the development of the domestic Internet of Things in the Bluetooth terminal market, and the increase in outstanding domestic chip design talents; Bluetooth manufacturers are gradually shifting to the mainland, and high-end low-power Bluetooth is a good track, and domestic substitution is inevitable.
Bluetooth chip manufacturers use product power consumption, cost and stability as their core competitiveness
Low power consumption is an important requirement for BLE design
Wireless connection devices have high requirements for power consumption, and balancing BLE performance and power consumption is critical. In emerging Bluetooth applications such as wearable devices, Bluetooth location services, smart homes, and industrial IoT, these devices do not need to be running all the time. They only need to transmit data or perform control when awakened, and the amount of data transmitted each time is not large. Due to size limitations and wireless connection requirements, devices need to have extremely low power consumption to maintain long-term operation, which puts forward requirements for the power consumption of BLE chips.
The main sources of power consumption of low-power Bluetooth chips are dynamic operation power consumption and static sleep power consumption. These power consumptions are affected by factors such as device activation time, sleep time, conversion frequency between activation and sleep, efficiency of executing communication protocols and applications, power supply voltage, and operating temperature. Figure 24 reflects the impact of connection events and connection intervals on power consumption. When the device is activated and running, the power consumption is higher, and when it is in sleep state, the power consumption is lower; when the connection interval is longer, the communication frequency decreases, the transmission time becomes longer, and the power consumption also becomes lower. In addition, Figure 25 shows that the time for the slave device (slave) to respond to the connection event issued by the master device (master) also affects the power consumption. The slave device only transmits when there is data. When there is no data to be transmitted, it does not need to respond to the master device, and the power consumption will also be reduced.
The reduction of BLE power consumption is mainly achieved through chip design and system design. At the beginning of the design, a relatively reasonable low-power system solution is obtained by reasonably dividing the software and hardware. On this basis, the design needs to consider anti-abnormal power consumption design, power management design, power management design, micro-power value-keeping circuit design, etc. in chip design; specifically, it is necessary to reduce the power consumption of radio frequency, power management and system control. In terms of system design, peripheral software development needs to adapt to hardware, optimize software code to reduce computational complexity, adopt low-power programming and effective peripheral power management design, so as to achieve the best balance between product power consumption and performance.
Barrier wireless connection stability is the embodiment of low-power Bluetooth product strength
The stability of BLE connection directly affects the user experience and is an important factor in determining the breadth and depth of product market development. There is a lot of wireless interference in the external environment, which brings problems to BLE connection, such as device inability to connect, abnormal disconnection, repeated disconnection and reconnection, and reset of slave connection. Bluetooth chips must be well resistant to external interference, and the manufacturer's chip design is the primary link to ensure stability. In particular, the circuit design of analog signal acquisition, analog-to-digital conversion, and RF end determines the stability of the product.
From the perspective of the signal chain, the Bluetooth chip needs to transmit the data collected by the sensor through the baseband and radio frequency. The baseband part processes digital signals, performs channel coding, pulse shaping, modulation and demodulation, etc., while the radio frequency end sends signals through power amplifiers, filters, antennas, etc. In these processes, the Bluetooth chip needs to distinguish and process signals generated by other Bluetooth devices or irrelevant signals generated by other wireless technologies to ensure complete and high-quality data transmission, which is also a reflection of the stability of the Bluetooth chip. The stability of the BLE chip largely reflects the product performance, which requires the company's experienced analog chip engineers to reasonably design the chip architecture to keep the Bluetooth transmission signal stable and optimize Bluetooth performance.
Cost is a key factor for Bluetooth low energy vendors to enter the market
Whether BLE manufacturers can successfully enter the market requires not only good product performance but also reasonable prices; the company itself also needs to maintain a high gross profit margin to maintain operations. Both of these factors require the company's product costs to be low, and chip costs mainly include chip design costs and chip hardware costs.
The design cost of BLE chip includes R&D cost, EDA development tools, IP licensing and other costs. These costs vary greatly among companies, and Bluetooth IP licensing costs account for a large part of the chip design cost. The CPU core used in low-power Bluetooth chips mainly comes from ARM, and the Bluetooth communication protocol is mostly from CEVA. These costs are not cheap.
The hardware cost of Bluetooth chips includes the costs of chip manufacturing, packaging and testing. Manufacturing costs account for the largest proportion, mainly including wafer costs and mask costs, which are directly related to the manufacturing process and chip design capabilities used. The more advanced the process, the more dies can be cut from a wafer, the smaller the area, and the lower the cost of a single chip; however, the cost of the wafer itself is related to the complexity of the chip design. The more complex the design, the higher the mask cost and the higher the chip manufacturing cost. In contrast, the chip packaging and testing costs account for a relatively small proportion, accounting for less than 30% of the hardware cost. Hardware cost control mainly reflects the bargaining power of chip companies, and the improvement of bargaining power is mainly achieved through scale expansion. Generally speaking, companies with large chip output have more obvious scale effects and lower average costs.
On the downstream application side, customers are also very concerned about the overall cost of BLE application solutions. Most Bluetooth chips exist in the form of SOCs, and in actual applications, other accessories may be required to form a system-level solution. Therefore, when customers choose which chip, they also need to consider the chipset level, the overall cost of the application solution, and the difficulty of implementing the solution.
*Disclaimer: This article is originally written by the author. The content of the article is the author's personal opinion. Semiconductor Industry Observer reprints it only to convey a different point of view. It does not mean that Semiconductor Industry Observer agrees or supports this point of view. If you have any objections, please contact Semiconductor Industry Observer.
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