WIMI Hologram’s Semiconductor Business Welcomes the Opportunity of Chip R&D, Closely Following Chip Manufacturing Giants
Intel once aspired to become the leader in chip industry within four years. But for now, according to an important statistic, they have fallen from the top of the industry. In the second quarter of 2021, Samsung surpassed Intel to become chip manufacturer with highest pay in the world. It seems to be preparing to reach the top in various industries after a long quietness. Some industry analysts said that in view of the different prospects of each core business, Samsung's status may keep in the near future.
This ranking is kind of reference value. There is no doubt that Intel needs financial influence more than ever. Under the leadership of the new CEO Pat Gelsinger, the company is embarking on an ambitious strategy to create advanced chips, which is one of the costliest efforts in the semiconductor industry. And Samsung, this South Korean technology company that focuses on memory chips yielded no ground. In the quarter from April to June, its revenue on semiconductor reached 22.74 trillion Won, equivalent to 19.7 billion dollars. While Intel's total revenue during this period was 19.6 billion dollars, which falls to 18.5 billion dollars after deducting the contribution of business units that have agreed to sell. Intel, as the industry leader, has maintained its top sales status for most of the past 30 years.
However, just as everyone is speculating on how Intel will beat back Samsung, the semiconductor industry welcome new guests, which makes the industry very lively. On August 3, after Apple and Samsung, Google also joined the direction of self-developed chip. Google and its parent company Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai posted Tensor on Twitter, a Google's self-developed chip. According to Sundar Pichai, Google's customized Tensor chip took 4 years to build and is the greatest innovation in the history of Google's Pixel series. It will be applied to the Google Pixel 6 and Google Pixel 6 Pro released this fall.
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It's reported by 9to5Google that Tensor, codenamed Whitechapel, was designed by Google and is said to be produced by Samsung. In an interview with The Verge, Google Pixel executive Rick Osterloh, who was in charge of hardware before, revealed that performance of Tensor's GPU should be in the leading position in the industry. This is Google's chip for its own Pixel series, making Google Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro the fastest, smartest, and safest Pixel phones in Google's statement. Before Tensor came out, Google's Pixel series has always used Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. The whole industry is curious about Google's motivation. Is its mobile SoC chip Google Tensor to harvest and monopolize the global Android ecosystem?
No matter how Google plans, the semiconductor industry nowadays can be described as fierce battles. It will take time to prove who can come out on top. To be honest, global semiconductors are booming, and sales will hit a record high. According to the latest forecast report released by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Association (WSTS), due to the excessive demand for memory, the global semiconductor sales are expected to increase by 19.7% to 527.223 billion dollars this year, which is much better than 469.403 billion dollars, previously estimated on December 2020 (yearly increase of 8.4%).
And the annual increase will reach above 10% for the first time since 2018, and the sales will far exceed 2018's 468.7 billion dollars, making a record. WSTS pointed out that the semiconductor demand seems to be highly increasing, it is estimated that global semiconductor sales will increase by 8.8% annually to 573.44 billion dollars in 2022, and will set high records continuously.
From the current point of view, since the first half of this year, not only raw materials and containers have risen sharply, but also various metal materials. The shortage of chips has become a common problem in the entire market, deteriorating manufacturing industries such as automobiles, electronic products, home appliances. Not only has the output of the automobile industry dropped sharply, but the consumption of chips by mobile phone manufacturers. This is all caused by the lack of chips.
At present, the shortage is hardly to be alleviated immediately. One of those who is in charge of the Association of Automobile Manufacturers stated that the impact of chip supply issues on the production of domestic enterprises will be at a pinnacle in the second and third quarters of 2021, and be slightly reduced in the fourth quarter, which will be truly alleviated in the first quarter of next year.
It is undeniable that the global chip shortage is bound to spread. However, the current trend of the global stock market is undoubtedly the semiconductor, new energy and related industries. As a current hot industry, the semiconductor industry is not only supported by a large number of policies, but also has an influx of funds. Under the influence of the lack of chips, chip companies continuously advancing the development of domestic substitution, welcoming a golden period of development.
To figure out the lack of chips, chip companies hope to have more initiative in chip supply, whether they are joint ventures, investment or research by themselves. Among them, independent self-research may be the most ideal way. Chip production can be arranged more strategically according to practical needs to reduce the risk of chip shortage caused by insufficient chip production capacity or poor supply chain.
Of course, in addition to in-depth control of chip supply, the more important significance of self-developed chips lies in the help of a series of advantages such as precise definition, shortening the cycle, and achieving differentiation. The domestic substitution of semiconductors is currently the most obvious development trend. The localization of high-end manufacturing is an important strategic direction of our country during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, giving the entire domestic semiconductor industry a great opportunity for respite to better research and development.
The slogan of independent to make chips is easy to mention, but it is never easy to actually practice it. Among the many domestic chip production brands at present, WiMi Hologram (WIMI), has reached a huge scale within 6 years of its establishment. It has surpassed obstacles all the way as a "dark horse" and even attracted the attention of the entire chip industry.
WIMI was established in 2015 and successfully listed in the United States in 2020. WIMI focuses on holographic cloud services, automotive AR holographic HUD(Head Up Display), 3D holographic pulse LiDAR, head-mounted light field holographic equipment, holographic semiconductor, holographic cloud software, holographic car navigation and other professional fields, covering from holographic car AR technology, 3D holographic pulse LiDAR technology, holographic vision semiconductor technology, holographic software development, holographic AR advertising technology, holographic AR entertainment technology, holographic ARSDK payment, interactive holographic communication and other holographic AR technologies. It is a holographic cloud comprehensive technical solution provider.
WiMi Hologram believes that it is more important to spur itself and settle for research and development. Since last year, WIMI has invested in its subsidiaries to develop semiconductor business. As a fabless semiconductor company, it has become the latest competitor in semiconductor industry. WIMI integrates circuit design, development, testing, consulting, and technical services, and is committed to creating the most complete electronic application design program in the global electronic industry chain.
Local semiconductor industry has begun to take shape, following the national strategic plan to promote the development of technology manufacturers in the global market. Based in Hainan Province, the company enjoys tax incentives and government support in circumstances of the fast-developing semiconductor industry, industrial and automation technology, as well as intelligent vision and holographic vision applications.
WIMI hopes that its new subsidiary will combine circuit design companies with a wide range of its own technologies to help develop the fabless semiconductor business. The investment and establishment of subsidiaries meets the company's requirements for optimizing supply chain management, reducing costs and enhancing competitiveness. It also caters for WIMI's continuous pursuit to enhancement of innovation, design and technical capabilities.
WIMI conducting semiconductor business, with experience of chip R&D and AI computing power, has deepened in the field of application development technology, and has accumulated profound industry experience. Seizing the good opportunities of industry development, WIMI has expanded the company's business and has a rich foundation of technology and product strength. Of course, this is related to the fact that WIMI has a strong R&D team and engineers, has won a national patent certificate, earned hundreds of related patents and software copyrights, and meanwhile got safety guarantees for products and high rate of chips with high quality.
Therefore, the application demand in the semiconductor industry can grow rapidly, and upgrade the field strategy of semiconductor. And in the future, the company intends to integrate IC design companies with advantages of core technology, or establish a technology R&D joint venture with chip manufacturers that currently have strong agency technology, to achieve semiconductor design, technical services, sales and other parts of upstream in the industry chain.
It is worth mentioning that in 2020, the company's holographic AR business and semiconductor business will generate approximately 44% and 56% of revenue respectively. WIMI plans to further develop the upstream business of the smart product market, the R&D and sales of semiconductor chips, in order to cultivate the core competitiveness of the enterprise. WIMI strives to support its subsidiaries in the development of semiconductor products, and sell such products to customers in the broader holographic ecosystem, providing some corporate customers with comprehensive solutions for computer chip products and central processing algorithms and related services, as well as business of software and semiconductors.
The fact is that the investment in semiconductor business development is only one segment of WIMI's huge industrial chain, which also includes holographic AR information technology development, software engineering production, cloud big data, Internet information services, etc., aiming to provide customers with AR-based Holographic services and products. The integrated AI algorithm turns ordinary images into holographic 3D content, which is deployed in holographic advertising, holographic entertainment, holographic education, holographic communication and other fields, expanding WIMI's business empire.
In WIMI's plan, it will continue to seize the opportunities of domestic chip development and strive to improve its own strength by practicing mental methods. Besides, it will create more innovative and competitive products for major manufacturers in the electronic product industry, and help products for consumers quickly occupy the end user market.
The importance of semiconductors is enormous. Most of the core units of electronic products are closely related to semiconductors, which are also used in integrated circuits, consumer electronics, communication systems, photovoltaic power generation, lighting, high-power power conversion and other fields. For instance, diodes are devices made of semiconductors.
The semiconductor industry is related to national security. No matter how the international political and economic situation changes in 2021, semiconductor industry is hoped to spur and settle down to make research and development. The general public is properly not to praise it too much, and not to belittle it too much but to face up to the domestic semiconductor industry. Believe that self-developed chips still have plenty of time for development and progress.
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