In fact, not only Apple Airpods is hot, but in Shenzhen Huaqiang North, the enthusiasm of TWS headphones has also been completely ignited.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Semiconductor Industry Watch” (ID: Icbank), author Mu Wei.
Maybe Apple didn’t even think that the true wireless Bluetooth headset Airpods they released three years ago would be so hot today. A few days ago, Apple released a new generation of airpods pro noise canceling headphones in their public number in the morning without a press conference. From zero to one point, the author saw a rush to buy in the circle of friends. On the next day, Apple’s official delivery cycle was also delivered from the beginning of the day, to one to two weeks, and then two to three weeks.
In fact, not only Apple Airpods is hot, but in Shenzhen Huaqiang North, the enthusiasm of TWS headphones has also been completely ignited.
But when everyone shouted for the airpods, the power of Huaqiang North’s creativity was high. This scene reminds me of the prosperity of Huaqiangbei’s “cottage machine” at the beginning of this century. But unlike a decade ago, the source of the “core” used in these devices has changed dramatically.
The era of cottages: the carnival of MediaTek and Samsung
Readers familiar with China’s electronics industry should know that Shenzhen Huaqiang North has a strong relationship with the products that were commonly known as “cottage machines”. Before we start talking about this, we must make it clear that the “cottage machine” and the “high copy machine” are not the same concept, and the latter is a subset of the former. This is certainly an amazing aspect of Huaqiang North.
However, Huaqiang North’s strongest creativity is reflected in the fact that they used their whimsical ideas to create a variety of mobile phone products, and quickly delivered finished products under the support of Shenzhen’s complete industrial chain. Behind these phones, there are two vendors that have to mention, that is MTK and Samsung.
About MediaTek, many previous articles have also said that this Taiwanese manufacturer has handed over the “Turn Key” solution in the mobile phone field, and they provide a platform that solves almost 99% of the problems (Huaqiang Beiren likes it) Called “sleeve”), laid the foundation for the prosperity of the “cottage machine.” Because based on the sets provided by MediaTek, developers don’t need to do too much debugging and research and development, they can directly make a mobile phone that can make calls. If you use the male model and the public board directly, the cycle from the project to the factory is much faster than you think.
Simplified development allows a team of several people to build a brand, and also allows them to have the energy to open up channels. In addition to the loose policies at the time, a variety of factors have brought together and made Huaqiang North a “cottage machine” paradise. . And in the riseIn the process of getting started, in addition to the benefits of MTK, Samsung, which does storage, also unexpectedly benefited.
The witness of the cottage machine era said that in the past, Huaqiang North was hard to find in addition to MediaTek, Samsung’s Flash is another scarce commodity. The necessary components of these mobile phones often appear to be difficult to find. At the time, in the supply chain of the cottage, few local chip manufacturers were seen on the core components. According to the author’s shallow understanding, at the time the cottage wave, a lot of peripheral functions, such as LED marquee, have emerged, which has brought relevant opportunities to domestic LED driver suppliers. Even the post-production news that became the leader of domestic processors was only able to look at this market.
According to NetEase’s report in 2009, MediaTek’s shipments of mobile phone chips reached 150 million in 2008, while Spreadtrum’s mobile phone shipments last year were only 2 million, which is only 1.3% of MediaTek. At the same time, MediaTek has about 70% of the mainland mobile phone chip market. That is, in 2008, Shanghai Kaiming Information, which focused on TD-SCDMA chips, closed down. The prosperity of the cottage machine did not give any chance to come out of the local 3G standard chip supplier. We can also see the basic status of China’s integrated circuits from this example. And look back at the performance of China’s integrated circuits in 2008. The total sales of the top ten IC design industry totaled 9.402 billion yuan, which is only equivalent to the revenue of a company in the US.
The world’s top ten in the IC design industry and the top ten in mainland China (2008)
TWS headset era: domestic chip makers put together
After ten years later, the emergence of true wireless headphones has once again rekindled the passion of Huaqiang North. Some practitioners who have been stalking Huaqiangbei for many years told the author that although there was no such scene, Huaqiang North had not tried such prosperity for a long time since the end of the cottage era.
Indeed, as I know, Huaqiang North’s tws Bluetooth headset has emerged in various forms. In addition to the high-end brands such as Huawei, OPPO and Xiaomi, the previously unknown QCY also shocked the world with huge shipments. Of course, there are also a variety of high imitation Airpods products. A few days after Apple released the new AirPods Pro, the industry also heard that Huaqiang North had conquered AirPods Pro. This also makes the author’s circle of friends extremely exciting.