The battleground of the military: the smart car field will set off a "core" battle

The battleground for chip makers is shifting from traditional computers and smartphones to smart cars. Future mobile computers will add four wheels.

a car consisting of more than 600 chips

Qualcomm recently announced that it will acquire Dutch chip maker NXP (USP) for US$47 billion, which will make Qualcomm a giant in the automotive chip industry overnight. NXP is the world's largest automotive chip retailer. Gartner semiconductor industry analyst Sheng Linghai told reporters: "Qualcomm is increasing its investment in the automotive sector, and it has become the top of the automotive chip."

According to the Gartner report, the value of the chip in each car has soared from $250 in 2000 to $350 this year. In addition, according to research institute IHS research, an ordinary new car currently contains 616 chips, and the number of chips in 2013 was only 550. IDC's research report shows that in 2015, the entire chip industry's investment in automotive accounts for up to 10%, about 29 billion US dollars.

The battleground of the military: the smart car field will set off a "core" battle

At present, Qualcomm's revenue on automobiles and other connectable devices accounts for about 8% of total revenue. Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said that after completing the acquisition of NXP, this proportion will increase significantly to 29%, creating more than $10 billion in revenue for the company.

Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Stanford C. Bernstein, said: "There has never been any major change in the strategy of going through 20 years, and this acquisition will be highly rewarding and risky."

The decline of smartphones is the main reason for the transformation of Qualcomm. More than 90% of Qualcomm's revenue comes from smartphone parts technology, but the current growth in this area is less than 2%. On the contrary, the potential growth of the automotive industry is huge. IDC predicts that the average growth rate of automotive chips will reach 7.7% between 2015 and 2020.

Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said that the current automotive industry is very similar to the mobile phone market in 2000. A large number of technologies are emerging that will disrupt the industry. The development path of the smartphone at that time can be used as a reference. But Qualcomm's transformation is not something that can be done overnight. Last year, the market size of smartphone chips was still three times that of car chips. For companies, ensuring a return on investment is critical.

As the automotive industry is more eager for autonomous driving functions, auto companies are also investing heavily in chip technology. For example, artificial intelligence algorithms and the meaning of reading different buttons, such demand is growing significantly. But in many ways, car autonomy and algorithms are still in the experimental stage, and there is no general consensus. For example, what is the best way to automate the car? Should the car have a supercomputer and powerful sensing functions to let it think for itself, or do it need only a simple technology based on remote network control to centrally manage traffic? These problems are still unsolved.

But what is certain is that all the monitors, parking sensors and anti-collision warning systems deployed in the future will require more chips to support. The higher the degree of autonomy, the higher the requirements for sensors, electronic brains and information exchange chips. With the maturity and development of electronic technology, Component integration has become a historical trend. In the future, more remote functions will be integrated into a single chip, which in the past may require the participation of multiple groups in the supply chain in the industry. The benefit of the integration is that even if the overall growth trend of the industry slows down, the dominant companies can still make a profit, and Qualcomm's victory in the mobile phone market indicates this.

Competitors are surnamed "English"

In fact, Qualcomm is not the first company to bet on the field of automotive chips. Large companies in the automotive industry have already taken the lead. Ford and BMW have joined forces with Internet technology companies and chip companies to test autopilot systems. In July this year, BMW announced that it has reached a cooperation with Intel to jointly develop and manufacture the unmanned electric vehicle iNext, which is scheduled to be launched in 2021 to replace the 7 Series as the flagship sedan. Intel provides chips that can increase the speed of the vehicle.

The bigger competitor is from Tesla. Elon Musk said last week that all Tesla cars will have autopilot capabilities in the future. Tesla currently uses chips from chip giant NVIDIA. NVIDIA is only the main chip, and it provides board and basic software with chips, which is relatively rare in the industry. "It is a very special company, giving up the current Red Sea and only doing its own competitive field." Gartner analyst Sheng Linghai told reporters.

According to Mizuho Securities, cooperation with Tesla may increase Nvidia's revenue by $25 million to $100 million. According to the Mizuho report, Tesla uses a chip retail price of about $250 to $300. Assuming that Tesla's production is about 90,000, Nvidia will receive $25 million in revenue. If Tesla decides to use the more expensive TItan GPU, which retails for $1,200, then NVIDIA's revenue will soar to $100 million.

NVIDIA's share price has also hit new highs. The stock price hit a high of $72.30 on October 25, a nearly 2.5 times that of $30 eight months ago. Tesla’s third-quarter earnings report was unexpectedly profitable yesterday, which is the company’s first quarterly profit in three years. Tesla's share price rose nearly 5% that day.

According to PwC’s latest report, “Global Intelligent Networking Automotive Industry Survey”, the annual sales of intelligent networked automotive technology will triple to five years, from 47.2 billion euros in 2017 to 2022. 140 billion euros.

In addition to NVIDIA, Qualcomm's fierce competition in the automotive sector also comes from Israel's Mobileye, the traditional PC chip giant Intel, and the German car chip giant Infineon.

In May of this year, Intel announced the acquisition of its vision software company Itseez. The core technology of Itseez is a set of vision algorithms called the Driver Advanced Assistant System that allows the car hardware to identify pedestrians and traffic signs, detect when the car is off the lane, and alert against possible collisions. Itseez's products also include face recognition software Facense and Itseez3D. The acquisition expresses Intel's determination to enter the automotive field. Last year, Intel also partnered with BlackBerry's QNX Software Systems to create automotive electronic technologies such as entertainment information systems, digital dashboards and driver assistance systems (ADAS). In China, Intel and BYD have reached a cooperation in the field of smart cars.

Infineon also announced this month that it has acquired the world's largest provider of automotive network security solutions, the Israeli company Argus. Based on the Argus cloud platform, the car's internal network can resist remote attacks from hackers. This is also a major acquisition by Infineon to invest in the field of car networking security.

In the face of these three competitors named "British", Qualcomm may have to adapt to a while. In a way, it acquired a company bigger than itself. Qualcomm currently has 33,000 employees and is still laying off employees, while NXP has 44,000 employees worldwide. On the other hand, Qualcomm itself is only responsible for the design, sales and technical license of the chip. And part of the workforce of NXP is provided by the factory, they can not produce more complex chips designed by Qualcomm.

So in theory this is a seemingly perfect acquisition, but putting different animals in one cage is not as simple as it seems.

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