Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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This is not the Great Leap Forward in integrated circuits for China.
These fabs must be commercially viable.
How many additional fabs does China need?
At least, let's say 10 big fabs, say for argument's sake. And these 10 big fabs will supply 70% or more of Chinese internal demand for chips.
It probably will take 2 years to build a fab. That TELSA factory in Shanghai was built as fast as any factory was built and that took 9 months and few more months for production to start.
They got to build the factory, then install all the specialized equipment to be ordered. That equipment is really expensive and not bought off the shelf. Put in the order, and the supplier will give a delivery date while they assemble that machine.
After all of that is done, then they test out the systems to make sure it all works. Then the customer must be lined up with their orders.
If there are no customers, or customers give small orders, then all those billions going down the drain.
It is not practical to build all these fabs at once. It is not the Great Leap Forward in fabs.
Build all this capacity at once, all within 2 years, your customers may be hesitant.
Better to build the fabs with spaced out time lines.
That way the market can adjust and make their plans for a seamless transition.
Also, if they build all 10 of their fabs at once, then someone makes another breakthrough during the construction, or when just finishing building the fab and news of a better tech emerges, then we are talking Great Leap Forward type economic mismanagement.
It is just how it works.
We can see how this story will drag on for some other players, as they know they still got a chance.
Now we understand why Mao went berserk about steel and grains in the late 1950s. The same hunger we feel these days about a complete domestic semiconductor supply chain. This has the potential effect of makes us irrational and stepping in with a big bang.
Well, if China wanted to replace all imported semiconductors, we would be looking at 30 large fabs per year for 5 years.
But that would require US-China relations to get much much worse.
You should question why the American still haven't done so (sanction all Chinese tech companies).
I know that Qualcomm fought hard to get Xiaomi off the blacklist.
Ericsson also fought hard for Sweden not to ban Huawei; no anglo or european company should expect to profit from sanctions on Chinese companies.
Apple's trying hard not to be kicked out of China by giving heaps of business to Chinese suppliers, but its days are numbered nonetheless.
The reason why they plan to blacklist Honor, HARMONY OS is gaining ground, they believed Honor is the culprit. In a certain degree I see @Annihilation98 sense of urgency, they want to stop it before it reach a critical mass. Huawei need to produced Chip ASAP.
From CnTechPost
As of Aug. 6, Huawei's HarmonyOS 2 smartphone operating system had more than 50 million users, according to a CCTV report Sunday. ...
August 9, 2021
From CnTechPost
As of Aug. 6, Huawei's HarmonyOS 2 smartphone operating system had more than 50 million users, according to a CCTV report Sunday. ...
August 9, 2021
Rumor had it that Honor would also jump to Harmony OS with the Magic 3 they are going to announce this week. At least that was the impression I got from the twitter handle Teme or Rodent950.
Given the current iteration of Harmony is pretty much the open source Android with bits replaced with HarmonyOS bits. A Honor Magic UI could be Android with bits of HarmonyOS in it, while still having a google license to use android app.
A while ago I also saw that Huawei was offering faster storage upgrade for older devices that would be updated to Harmony OS.
So the potential userbase is quiet big, what it really needs is the Chinese app eco system to go global and give support to Harmony.
And Samsung is using its own Exynos chips. Who is Qualcomm going to sell its chips to?
There isn't anything more than bluff from the weak position to be found in the article. Qualcomm will lose sales to Honor, but like in the example of Huawei, other companies will increase their purchase of Qualcomm chips to fill the place of Honor, so Qualcomm's overall sales will be the same or even bigger due to panick buying and hoarding by Chinese manufacturers. A real backfire possible before China's own semiconductor production would be other companies including Honor ditching Google and Android but they wouldn't do it unless blacklisted like Huawei.
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