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It’s been a long time coming. China’s been trying vainly for 30 years to spawn an indigenous IC capability. Last year may have been the turning point.
In 2010, ten indigenous mainland China chip design houses pulled revenues of over $100 million each.
In 2009, China had only five companies that size.
Last year the IC design industry in China grew its revenues by 15%.
The big focus is mobile telecoms. Seven of the top ten work exclusively on wireless chips.
HiSilicon Technologies, Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Communications are all major mobile players.
In other fields like multimedia SOCs, established companies Vimicro, Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics, and Actions Semiconductor, have been joined by newcomers Telegent Systems (Shanghai), Haier (Beijing) IC Design, Hangzhou Nationalchip Science & Technology, and Montage Technology.
In consumer ICs, Ingenic Semiconductor, a supplier of 32-bit embedded CPU products, ranked third in China’s consumer electronics chip market and the first in educational electronics chip market in 2009, and it will go public on the Growth Enterprises Market (GEM)Board in 2011.
IC design companies which doubled revenues in the first nine months of 2010 were Shanghai Belling, China Resources Microelectronics, Jilin Sino-Microelectronics (JSMC), and Solomon Systech (International).
All four companies have expanded into areas such as display drivers, automotive electronics and MEMS while maintaining their traditional IC businesses.
In multimedia IC design, besides traditional companies such as Vimicro, Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics, and Actions Semiconductor, Telegent Systems (Shanghai), Haier (Beijing) IC Design, Hangzhou Nationalchip Science & Technology, and Montage Technology have developed rapidly.
In smart card ICs there are Datang Microelectronics Technology, Beijing Tongfang Microelectronics, Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics and Invengo Information Technology.
In other areas are: Zhuhai Orbita Control Engineering. specializing in embedded SoCs; Beijing Fuxing Xiaocheng Electronic Technology, specialising in smart ammeter ICs; and Qingdao Eastsoft Communication Technology, specialising in power line communications ICs.
That’s very interesting thanks, Robert, seems that example is the best motivator – like ARMVirata/Element14 in the UK
Chinese IC design house start-ups is a very interesting and active area. Unfortunately the Chinese are if anything too Entrepreneurial for the good of the industry, let me explain.
What happens in China is that the Engineer graduates and works for a western or Taiwanese firm for say 5 years and then decides to branch out on their own. So instead of 5 or maybe 10 well funded start-ups, you get 100 or 200 poorly funded individuals trying to find some application with immediate cash flow (very low hanging fruit)
This hyper start-up mode is very detrimental to the process of building a sustainable industry, especially when their initial products are often rip-offs from their last employer, BTW this also accounts for a significant part of the FAKE IC’s sold in HK.
In the last couple of years there has been a realization that start-ups need to co-operate and build into larger units with proper products and proper marketing, so the newer breed of Chinese IC start-ups are just beginning to make waves. This newer breed is very focused replicating the successes of the Taiwan start-ups Mstar and Mediatek. Every Chinese semiconductor gossip sheet, devotes front page space to Mstar and Mediatek, so the two businesses cultures and methods are being widely copied by today’s Chinese start-up generation.
Thanks Ash, that’s useful
Also Shanghai Jade, NuFront and RockChip. RockChip in particular ship a lot of chips.
Thanks Matt but on the company’s web-site it calls itself ‘Haier (Beijing) IC Design’ and says it is situated in the Beijing Zhongguancun Advanced Science and Technology District
Interesting post, thanks. Haier is from Qingdao though, not Beijing. 🙂