At present, home appliance companies have stood on the crossroads of transformation and upgrading, high-end, intelligent, fashion and other home appliance companies need to work in the direction. In this new round of diversified development trend, the chip has become the focus of the layout of home appliance enterprises.

First, Changhong, TCL, Haier, Midea and other companies entered the chip industry in the early years, and recently, Konka, Gree and other companies have increased their chips, and more and more black and white power giants have entered the chip field.

In terms of products and the industry itself, 'core making' is obviously not easy, but a 'protracted war' that requires a lot of manpower, material resources, endurance and funds. In the view of nail technology, although the home appliance giant 'core' is blocked and long, it is also promising.

Home appliance giants have embarked on the 'core' journey

The importance of home appliance companies to the chip business seems to have risen to an unprecedented point. Nail technology noted that on May 21, Konka Group announced the new establishment of environmental protection technology division and semiconductor Technology Division at its 38th anniversary celebration and transformation and upgrading strategy conference, which is also the first time Konka announced its entry into the semiconductor industry.

In addition to the establishment of the business division, Konka also clearly put forward the semiconductor development goal: in 5-10 years, to become one of the international outstanding semiconductor companies, committed to becoming China's top 10 semiconductor companies, annual revenue of more than 10 billion yuan.

In addition, it is understood that Li Hongtao, vice president of Konka Group and head of semiconductor technology Division, said that Konka will focus on memory chips and Internet of Things chips in the future.

Coincidentally, the recent announcement of 'entering' the semiconductor industry is also the white power giant Gree. Last month, Gree said in its 2017 annual report that the company's retained funds will be used for the construction of production bases, smart factory upgrades, as well as technology research and development and marketing of new industries such as smart equipment, smart home appliances and integrated circuits.

In a recent interview with the media, Dong Mingzhu, chairman of Gree Electric Appliances, said: 'Even if the investment is 50 billion, Gree also wants to succeed in chip research.'

In just over a month, the two electric giants clearly revealed their ambitions in 'core making'. In fact, according to nail technology, more home appliance giants have already embarked on the 'core' journey. For example, Changhong and the Institute of Acoustics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly released China's first composite intelligent voice chip, which was then used in Changhong's TV, air conditioning, kitchen and bathroom, small household appliances and other terminal products; TCL invested in chip companies, introduced Unigroup as a strategic investor, and set up a merger and acquisition fund; Midea and Canchip signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly build the 'Midea - Canchip (SMIC) Semiconductor Joint Laboratory'; Skyworth released a new OLED TV equipped with its self-developed AI picture quality chip at the CES show in the United States at the beginning of this year...

It is not difficult to find that more and more home appliance companies are pouring into the chip field, and gradually improving the strategic position of chips in their own business. So, home appliance enterprises self-developed chips, what is the future?

The road is slow and long

There is no doubt that it is good for home appliance companies to increase their chip self-research efforts. But to truly realize the chip dream, it is not simple. From the past experience, the chip belongs to the long-term accumulation, huge investment industry, its technology research and development has high precision, long cycle characteristics. As Konka Group President Zhou Bin said, 'Semiconductor is not achieved overnight, not quickly can be achieved, but a protracted war.'

Taking Huawei, which has achieved good results in the field of mobile phone chips, as an example, its research and development accumulation time has reached more than ten years, and the investment is huge. According to Nail technology, as early as 2005, Huawei developed a baseband, and its mobile phone chip K9 launched in 2009, eventually led to failure for various reasons, and then K3V2 game compatibility problems and heating problems. Until 2014, the Kirin 920 launched by Huawei was a truly complete and relatively competitive SOC in the market.

And look at Huawei's R&D spending. According to Huawei's 2017 annual report released earlier, Huawei achieved a net profit of 47.5 billion yuan in 2017, while research and development expenses were as high as 89.7 billion yuan, almost twice the net profit. In fact, it is understood that Huawei's annual R&D investment has exceeded its net profit since 2013, and Huawei's cumulative R&D investment in the past decade has exceeded 394 billion yuan.

Therefore, the technical difficulty and high cost of chip research and development are self-evident. For home appliance companies, they will inevitably encounter difficulties in a series of processes such as chip research and development, production, and landing.

In addition, unlike mobile phone chips, chip manufacturers are more dispersed in the home appliance industry. At present, most of the chips used by home appliance companies are application-oriented, and the basic chip capability is not good, which obviously further increases the difficulty of self-research by enterprises.

Therefore, Nail technology believes that the current home appliance enterprises will still face challenges such as core technology breakthroughs and sustained investment in research and development after upgrading chip research and development to an important strategic plate. The road is long and the test is the determination and patience of the enterprise.

There is much to be done

The occurrence of any event will not be for no reason, from the tacit understanding of home appliance giants swarmed into the chip field, self-developed chips obviously have the possibility of success. In the view of nail technology, this may mainly be attributed to the following three points.

First, at present, most of the chips used in the domestic home appliance industry rely on imports, and the market has huge potential space. It is understood that at present, the chips used in domestic black and white electricity products almost all rely on imports, and self-developed chips have a huge potential market space.

The main reason for this situation is that domestic chip manufacturers lack a complete solution, not only in the performance indicators and the international advanced level has a large gap, the chip yield, reliability and stability can not meet the requirements of home appliance enterprises.

Therefore, in the case that the home appliance market is gradually becoming saturated, self-developed chips are a good extension direction for home appliance companies, and the vacancy in the domestic market provides a steady stream of power for home appliance companies.

Second, in the face of the huge demand of the chip market, the state is also vigorously supporting. Nail technology was informed that in 2014, China issued the 'National Integrated Circuit Industry Development and Promotion Outline', and set up the national integrated circuit industry Investment fund (large fund), focusing on supporting the integrated circuit industry. Data show that as of the end of 2017, the national large fund invested in 49 enterprises, a total of 67 projects, a total of 118.8 billion yuan of committed investment projects, the actual investment of 81.8 billion yuan, accounting for 86% and 61% of the total scale of the first phase.

It can be seen that Konka, Gree and other home appliance giants in the recent layout of the chip field is also a response to the national call. In fact, this is not the first time that the home appliance industry has entered the chip field on a large scale. According to Nail technology, in 1999, the state increased support for the chip industry, and then under the guidance of the 'Several policies to encourage the development of the software industry and integrated circuit industry' (No. 18), a number of home appliance giants tried to extend to the chip field, such as Haier in 2000 in Beijing, Shanghai set up two integrated circuit companies.

In addition, for now, since the ZTE incident, the domestic wave of 'chip heat' has been set off, and consumers are enthusiastic about 'domestic core'. With the support of the policy and the encouragement of consumers, the future of home-appliance companies' self-developed chips can be expected.

Third, home appliance giants have also deeply recognized the importance of self-developed chips, and with its own resources and financial advantages, as long as the effort, 'core' is still promising. At present, the competitive environment of the home appliance market is becoming more and more cruel, and the intelligent upgrade of home appliance products and enterprises has become an inevitable development trend. However, intelligent transformation can not only see the surface, only when the enterprise really has the strength to create smart devices, is the real intelligent transformation, rather than staying in the 'manufacturing' stage of home appliances.

Therefore, chip self-research plays an important role in the process of enterprises breaking through their own intelligent bottlenecks, which is also conducive to improving their core competitiveness and avoiding elimination in the great waves.

For Konka, Gree and other home appliance giants, as mentioned above, it has clearly shown the importance of chip research and development, and these home appliance giants do have certain resources, financial advantages and brand influence, commercial appeal, as long as the chip industry to make a deep enough layout, self-developed chips or promising.

In summary, although the 'core' of home appliance giants is blocked and long, with its own advantages, under favorable conditions such as market vacancies, state support and consumer encouragement, as long as it takes great efforts and makes great efforts, the future is still promising.