5G chips are so scarce? These five manufacturers will share the 5G pie for now

According to the Operator Finance Network, industry insiders revealed that after some 5G mobile phones were launched on the market, manufacturers helplessly discovered that there were only five 5G chip manufacturers in the world, and mobile phone companies had very little choice in 5G chips.

The companies that can develop 5G chips are Huawei HiSilicon, Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, and Unisoc.

At the beginning of this year, Huawei officially released the 5G multi-mode terminal chip, Balong 5000, to the world. The chip uses a 7nm process, and the download rate in the Sub-6GHz band of the 5G network can reach 4.6Gbps, and the peak download rate in the mmWave band can reach 6.5Gbps. It is the first time in the industry to support NR TDD and FDD full spectrum, and simultaneously supports SA and NSA 5G networking modes. According to Huawei, Balong 5000 is currently the most integrated and powerful 5G terminal baseband chip in the industry. It is not only the world's first single-chip multi-mode 5G baseband chip, but also supports a single-chip solution that integrates 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G, with lower energy consumption and stronger performance.

Qualcomm also released its second 5G baseband chip, the Snapdragon X55, this year. Built on a 7nm process, the single chip supports 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G multi-mode, and supports millimeter wave and sub-6GHz frequency bands, TDD and FDD standards, and supports independent and non-independent networking modes. In 5G mode, the Snapdragon X55 can achieve a download speed of up to 7Gbps and an upload speed of up to 3Gbps; it also supports Cat 22 LTE, which brings a download speed of up to 2.5 Gbps.

Samsung released its first 5G baseband chip, Exynos Modem 5100, last year. In terms of specifications, the Exynos Modem 5100 chip is built with a 10nm LPP process, supports Sub 6GHz low-medium frequency (to be adopted in my country) and mmWave (millimeter wave) high frequency, and is backward compatible with 2G/3G/4G, including but not limited to GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, HSPA, 4G LTE, etc. Exynos Modem 5100 can achieve a maximum download rate of 2Gbps in Sub 6GHz and a download rate of 6Gbps in the millimeter wave band. At the same time, the speed of 4G is also increased to 1.6Gbps.

MediaTek released its 5G mobile platform in May this year. This multi-mode 5G system-on-chip (SoC) is manufactured using a 7nm process and has a built-in 5G modem Helio M70. This multi-mode 5G mobile platform is suitable for the 5G independent and non-independent (SA/NSA) network architecture Sub-6GHz frequency band, and supports and is compatible with all generations of connection technologies from 2G to 4G. It has a download speed of 4.7 Gbps and an upload speed of 2.5 Gbps.

Unisoc also released the 5G baseband chip Ivy 510 at MWC 2019 held in February this year. It uses TSMC's 12nm process technology, supports multiple 5G key technologies, can realize 2G/3G/4G/5G multiple communication modes, complies with the latest 3GPP R15 standard specifications, supports Sub-6GHz frequency band and 100MHz bandwidth, and is a highly integrated, high-performance, low-power 5G baseband chip. In addition, Ivy 510 can support both SA (standalone networking) and NSA (non-standalone networking) networking modes, fully meeting the different communication and networking requirements in the 5G development stage. A downlink peak rate of 1.5Gbps is achieved in the NSA 2.6G frequency band.

Since 5G baseband chips need to be compatible with 2G/3G/4G networks at the same time, the modes and frequency bands that need to be supported have increased significantly. Everbright Securities pointed out in a research report that the modes that 4G mobile phones need to support have reached 6 modes, and will reach 7 modes in the 5G era, and the complexity of chip design will increase significantly. For chip manufacturers, stronger technical research and development capabilities are needed. Among them, Intel, which is favored by the industry, has been slow to deliver a satisfactory answer and simply sold its baseband business to Apple.

Such high requirements and design complexity have resulted in only a handful of 5G chip manufacturers in the world. But even if there is an oligopoly trend, the competition is still fierce. Faced with the big 5G cake, no one wants to take a smaller piece, not to mention that there are still many chip manufacturers vying to squeeze into this echelon. It remains to be seen who will be the winner in the future.