Yuxin Yang Shubin: Committed to building a high-quality Chinese analog IC brand under the wave of localization

People really need to work hard to make themselves proud. Once they achieve something, the whole world will be happy with them.

Faced with the sudden outbreak, the cooling of export market demand, the intensified Sino-US conflict and the overall shortage of production capacity, when asked why she could maintain a calm attitude in 2020, which was such a difficult year for the semiconductor industry, Yang Shubin, chairman of Shanghai Yuxin Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., quoted this famous saying by Yi Shu. Despite this, she still used eight words to describe the challenging year of 2020: shutdown, confusion, persistence, and achievement.

Yang Shubin, Chairman of Shanghai Yuxin Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.

Brother and sister join hands to start a business and develop "Go tactics"

In 2009, Yang Shubin's brother, Yang Yikai, who had worked for Epson and Nanjing Weimeng for many years, and Fu Chunguo founded Yuxin Electronics in Shanghai, engaged in the design and development of analog integrated circuits and mixed analog and digital integrated circuits. As Yuxin's development scale expanded, Yuxin moved to Lingang in 2014. At the invitation of his brother many times, Yang Shubin, who had a legal background, gave up the traditional industry and stable life in Guangdong and joined Yuxin as his brother's angel investor. So far, Yuxin has formed a "three-legged" situation with Yang Shubin in charge of internal management of the company, Yang Yikai in charge of business and market development, and Fu Chunguo in charge of technology research and development. In this regard, Yang Shubin explained that many entrepreneurs of IC companies have a background in science and engineering and are slightly weak in management. However, as a grassroots entrepreneur, technology and market alone are not enough. If management is done well in the early stage of entrepreneurship, a relatively high starting point will be obtained.

At this time, the Yang brothers and sisters did not have huge funds and background support, and the newly born Yuxin urgently needed to choose a correct and suitable product to enter. After market research and analysis, they found that the domestic solar LED lamp driver chip was almost blank at that time, and the chip integration of foreign manufacturers was not that high, and the price was not low, but the potential market demand was very huge. Yuxin targeted the niche market of solar lawn lamps, quickly developed the first solar driver chip in China, and improved the chip integration. The module solutions of other chips require 9 chips, and Yuxin's products only need 2 chips, and the price has dropped from a few US dollars to less than 1 yuan.

After the product was launched on the market, it quickly became a hit due to its excellent cost-effectiveness and has been selling well ever since. Yuxin also successfully gained a foothold and started to make profits the following year. Today, it ranks first in the solar lighting driver IC field. After the first victory, Yuxin then fully entered the mobile lighting IC market and launched a series of power management chips for small household appliances, consumer electronics and other products to further expand the market.

Behind the success of the first product is tremendous hardship and unreserved dedication. Yang Shubin recalled that after the product was successfully developed, Yang Yikai drove from Shanghai to the hands of a customer in Ningbo overnight. The next morning, after the customer passed the test, he successfully won the first order. "Gradually, as a newly established and unknown small company, we won the industry's recognition with our efficiency and quality. After that, orders kept coming in," she said.

"The company has developed a 'Go tactic', selecting a market segment and attacking one square at a time to maximize technology iteration and market share. Now Yuxin has in-depth cooperation with domestic terminal manufacturers and continuous innovation, and has become a leader in the field of solar mobile lighting, comprehensively promoting the localization of chips in this field." Yang Shubin said, "Since user demand for solar LED products changes rapidly and is demanding, the company must increase its R&D efforts to meet user expectations, continuously explore new markets, and always stand at the forefront of the industry to guide market development. This requires Yuxin to always maintain a high level of market sensitivity and continuously improve its technology development and market development capabilities."

In 2020, affected by the epidemic and Sino-US trade frictions, the traditional LED lighting market was hit hard, many projects were suspended, and sales slowed down. However, the solar LED lighting field showed a thriving market vitality with its energy-saving, environmentally friendly, intelligent and personalized characteristics. Yang Shubin emphasized that because Yuxin successfully grasped the direction of market development and continuously launched new products that met user needs, the company's performance rose instead of falling, reaching a historical high. "In the future, we will be optimistic about the solar LED lighting industry in the long term."

Deeply cultivate analog chips and continue to lay out the product "chessboard"

Yang Shubin likened that making analog chips is like being an old Chinese doctor, which requires the accumulation of experience, and the older you are, the better. Yuxin insists on originality and research and development, and has applied for a number of invention patents, completing an average of more than 3 patents each year. It has accumulated more than 100 domestic layout patents and more than 20 invention patents, and 6 projects have been recognized by the Science and Technology Commission as Shanghai High-tech Achievement Transformation Projects. The product moat is getting higher and higher, and gradually forming a technical barrier. "Now some products can already benchmark international manufacturers such as TI and Infineon."

After years of development, Yuxin has been recognized by many outstanding customers in the industry and has entered the supply chains of many global first-tier terminal brands such as Xiaomi and Philips.

In 2018, Yuxin established a subsidiary in Guangzhou and entered the South China market. In 2019, it introduced the SAP system for standardized internal management, further integrated resources, optimized supply chain business processes and management processes, and established a partnership mechanism of co-growth and co-sharing. Technically, the next step of Yuxin's "Go tactics" is to target the lithium battery power management market, enter the small home appliance market, make a name for itself in the TWS field, and finally enter the automotive electronics market.

In the past few years, led by Apple, TWS shipments have exploded from 9.18 million units in 2016 to 220 million units in 2020. Canalys, an international technology market analysis and consulting company, recently predicted that TWS headset shipments will reach 350 million units in 2021. Moreover, as TWS headsets gradually overcome technical challenges such as binaural transmission, active noise reduction, and smart functions, TWS headsets have gone from "usable" to "easy to use", and the industry has entered a period of accelerated development.

As early as 2018, Yuxin was keenly aware of the development trend of the TWS market, made early arrangements, increased R&D efforts, and successfully commercialized a number of TWS power management products, which can not only meet the high-end market's demand for personalized and fashionable products, but also meet the ordinary people's high-quality and low-cost user experience. At present, it has independent IPs for power chips such as DC-DC and lithium battery management. According to customer needs, it can be matched with various functional requirements, such as various protections, load detection and communication protocol requirements, etc., to help customers realize various specifications of TWS charging warehouse products.

With clear strategic planning, Yuxin's revenue exceeded 100 million yuan in 2019, and is expected to grow by nearly 50% year-on-year in 2020. This year, Yuxin will enter the PD fast charging field, develop high-power fast charging AC-DC chips, and develop low-power, low-noise, high-precision LDOs to power smart terminals.

Yang Shubin explained that, first of all, users of smart hardware such as mobile phones have the pain point of slow charging. The emergence of new entertainment applications such as short videos, live broadcasts, drama chasing, and online games has increased the time users spend using smart hardware such as mobile phones. With the trend of larger and larger mobile phone screens, the power consumption of smartphones is increasing. At the same time, the battery capacity of mainstream high-end smartphones from major manufacturers has reached more than 4000mAh, and conventional charging methods will significantly extend the charging time of mobile phones and reduce user experience. Therefore, fast charging will gradually become the standard for smartphone users; secondly, as mobile phone manufacturers stop giving away charging heads, third-party charging products are expected to get epochal opportunities, and the demand for third-party charging products will accelerate; finally, advanced charging solutions such as GaN further improve the product structure of the fast charging market, and the fast charging market is expected to expand rapidly. Based on the above reasons, the company hopes to open up new markets in the field of PD fast charging and make it a new growth point for the company.

At the same time, with the in-depth promotion of the Internet of Things and 5G technology, smart terminals will enter a period of rapid development, and the demand for related LDOs will also show explosive growth. She pointed out that with the rapid development of smart terminals today, how to extend the service life of batteries has become an important issue for electronic designers. At present, when the MCU and other processors on the market are in sleep mode, the power consumption can reach less than 1uA. Since the device is in sleep mode most of the time, the static working current of the linear regulator LDO determines the service life of the battery, and low power consumption becomes the future development trend of LDO; secondly, as people's requirements for the intelligence level of smart terminals are getting higher and higher, more and more sensors are carried on smart terminals, and how to make these sensors run stably and reliably has also become the focus of major manufacturers. Low-noise, high-precision LDO can provide "clean" power for sensors and escort the reliable operation of sensors. In this regard, Yuxin will layout the LDO market for a long time, increase the research and development of high-performance LDO, and seize this rare historical development period.