Source: Sina Tech.
At its 2021 Global Analyst Summit, ZTE said total shipments of consumer products, including personal and home terminals, would exceed 100 million units within 2021, with more than half of them powered by the company’s own chips.
The completed increase in its stake in ZTE Microelectronics also offers a glimpse of where ZTE’s R&D is heading.
“2021 is a pivotal year in ZTE’s strategy cycle, facing the next cycle that begins in 2022,” said Xie Junshi, executive vice president and chief operating officer, in a speech at the summit. ZTE will focus on the two fields of connectivity and computing power, continuing to develop underlying technologies such as chips, algorithms and architectures while stepping up exploration of key product technologies and directions.
On ZTE’s chip design capability, Xie has said its chips cover the whole process: architecture design, simulation, front-end design, back-end physical implementation, package and test design, packaging and testing, and future failure analysis, with R&D and design achievable across the entire life cycle.
Chips are the most hardcore high-tech industry in the world. Manufacturing measured in nanometres is extremely complex, spanning chip design, fabrication, packaging and testing, materials and equipment, with a supply chain touching more than 50 industries. China’s semiconductor industry has reached a fairly high level in design and packaging, but underlying high-end equipment, EDA software and materials still come mainly from overseas vendors.
In the application fields where telecom vendors compete, the highest chip threshold is the base station: base-station chips differ from consumer chips in maturity and reliability requirements and need a long ramp from trial to volume use. Optical communications and the mobile phone chain have lower thresholds, and domestic chip suppliers in some niches have grown into international leaders, though overall still in lower-end applications.
A ZTE product line head said in an earlier interview that based on the 7-nanometre process, ZTE’s 5G chips have reached the third generation. For ZTE, the key point of self-developed chips is business sustainability and the security of the whole supply chain, while pursuing better cost performance.
In the summit Q&A, Xie said that in the next stage ZTE hopes to build a highly resilient operating organisation to adapt to risks and new business forms, maintain steady annual growth, and enter the Fortune Global 500 within two to three years.
Xie said ZTE has strengthened supply chain management in three ways: making R&D highly compatible and replaceable to widen supply chain options and avoid single sourcing; deepening strategic cooperation with leading supply chain companies; and strengthening its forecasting capability. One core aim of the resilient organisation is to improve forecasting so that safety stock and other responses can be prepared in advance.
ZTE will also continue R&D on 5G backward evolution while starting 6G research, aiming to apply key technologies early, such as intelligent reflecting surfaces.
“Our goal is to participate deeply in domestic 5G scale construction, keep optimising mainstream products and markets overseas, and maintain steady growth of the operator business as our first curve. At the same time we are increasing investment in government and enterprise, actively adjusting the consumer business, and gradually advancing new business layout, hoping that the second curve of growth, represented by government-enterprise, terminals and new businesses, will gradually emerge,” Xie said.
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