Chinese semiconductor industry

hullopilllw said:

If all Chinese phone makers jump onto the HarmonyOS bandwagon, then the only major player left using Android will be Samsung no ?

BBK, Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE can push in some serious money to fund app developers and left Google on her own.

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At the end market will decide. If they want HarmonyOS over Android, then Samsung will automatically jump to HarmonyOS too instead of loosing market share. However if market still wants Android over HarmonyOS, then all Chinse smartphone vendor (xiaomi, oppo, vivo, zte, 1+, lenovo, tcl etc) will also still offering Android at least in international market.

hullopilllw said:

If all Chinese phone makers jump onto the HarmonyOS bandwagon, then the only major player left using Android will be Samsung no ?

BBK, Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE can push in some serious money to fund app developers and left Google on her own.

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I think the currently confirmed phone brands that will ship Harmony OS out of the box are Huawei, BBK (Oppo-Vivo) and Meizu and only some models of their China sold phones. Support is planned for HiSilicon, Qualcomm and MediaTek chips with rumors for Unisoc also. Other rumors involve talk about providing ROMs to flash various brands like Xiaomi, but unconfirmed.

krautmeister said:

Even now, Japanese industry is considered a threat and still suppressed. Yet Japan willingly "bows their head" to their master, just as all the dogs bow their head to the alpha dog "America". This is how the Anglo-American Empire works. It leverages its leading position and influence to keep the biggest dogs in check to scare the runts of the litter who then follow the alpha. When you have even a large power like Japan come up against the combined power of America and most of the OECD, Japan will bow down because they don't want to become a Russia, Iran or Venezuela.

In a "fair" competition with a real free market, Japan would have already had their own EUV lithographs. They already have most of the important components to create EUV equipment. They just lack certain precision optics that ASML partners blockade through industrial cartels, cartels that were promoted by the alpha dog. If it were not for this, Nikon would be going head to head with ASML and Canon might even still be in the lithography business.

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To be fair, Japanese technology was built on top of US technology and patents. Japan ought to have decoupled and tried to vertical integrate by the late 1970s. But I guess profits were so good and the government was naive.

There is a similar theme in China. The decoupling is not that harsh because of China's huge market, a spine of CCP, sovereignty and investments (belated as it may). This decade is make or break for China to fully decouple and establish a computing chain (from processors to software).

Xsizor said:

To be fair, Japanese technology was built on top of US technology and patents. Japan ought to have decoupled and tried to vertical integrate by the late 1970s. But I guess profits were so good and the government was naive.

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Japan's industries had a policy of vertical integration up to the early 1990s before they started outsourcing. They never built up the critical mass needed to withstand an American led IP onslaught like China has endured. After the Soviet collapse, it became clear that Japan might become a possible target if they didn't bow down completely. If Japan had to endure tech sanctions and scientific blockades, they would have clearly ended up the loser. So, it's somewhat understandable what happened, even though it doesn't look good for them.

Xsizor said:

There is a similar theme in China. The decoupling is not that harsh because of China's huge market, a spine of CCP, sovereignty and investments (belated as it may). This decade is make or break for China to fully decouple and establish a computing chain (from processors to software).

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I think it's a done deal in the case of China. They are already way past the critical mass they needed to overcome a tech decoupling, except in the case of commercial aerospace where they have a long-term disadvantage despite the C919, due to its high dependence on critically important imported components. In virtually everything else, they can and will overcome any lack of domestic alternatives within the near-medium term future. Plus, those long-term disadvantages will also fall, they will just take longer. With Japan, there were some industries where they could not possibly ever keep up just for lack of talent and strategic size.

jfcarli said:

China is pumping billions of dollars into semiconductors, the US is pumping billions of dollars into semiconductors, S. Korea is pumping billions of dollars into semiconductors, Taiwan is pumping billions of dollars into semiconductors, EU is pumping billions of dollars into semiconductors, now Japan wants to pump billions of dollars into semiconductors....

Is there something wrong with this pattern??

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Well ... may be a "glut"

I don't know, but "Asianometry":

W20 said:

Well ... may be a "glut"

I don't know, but "Asianometry":

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Existence of glut will be more advantageous for China in general, because the downstream industries (which consume chips) are more massive in China. Moreover, since China kind of late in the upstream, China's stake is lower.

Yes

the ability to 'dive deep' is painful for those of us who have put money in, but sometimes it is unavoidable

caudaceus said:

Existence of glut will be more advantageous for China in general, because the downstream industries (which consume chips) are more massive in China. Moreover, since China kind of late in the upstream, China's stake is lower.

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You are correct. The glut is not a maybe. It is absolutely sure there will be a severe glut.

The only country that has a market for the increased production is China. China will essentially be substituting imports. That is THE MARKET for its increased chips output.

The rest of the world will have to swallow not only the increased output capacity, but also the chips that China will stop buying from them.

Furthermore, the glut which will certainly come, will lead many companies to bankruptcy. That is when China can buy cheap assets to further increase its production.

I think the glut is a win-win for China.

jfcarli said:

You are correct. The glut is not a maybe. It is absolutely sure there will be a severe glut.

The only country that has a market for the increased production is China. China will essentially be substituting imports. That is THE MARKET for its increased chips output.

The rest of the world will have to swallow not only the increased output capacity, but also the chips that China will stop buying from them.

Furthermore, the glut which will certainly come, will lead many companies to bankruptcy. That is when China can buy cheap assets to further increase its production.

I think the glut is a win-win for China.

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Remind me that Huawei rode the telecom bubble as its ascendance. Their headhunters even scouring bars where laid off Ericsson and Nokia workers were drinking.

krautmeister said:

Harmony OS is open source. I think the timeline for it to become open source was originally slated for 2022 but they changed it to now instead.

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Just look for openharmony on gitee, but as far as I can see only the IoT kernel has been open sourced called LiteOS and the application development layers. A lot of stuff is in English and have diagrams so it's not that hard to check what harmony will be like.

I do wonder when they will open source their mobile kernel and if they will use the harmony application layer on top of the Linux kernel for their desktop distribution.