Chinese semiconductor thread II

[ansy1968]

To be honest, Huawei is overcharging customers as well, adding lots of brand premium to its product lines, not much different than what Apple is doing.

Yes to a certain degree and also as a Chinese, Huawei is a symbol of National pride for most of us. A Phoenix that rose from the ashes.

I am visiting China now, I recently tried out Huawei's Freeclip earbuds, pricing 1299RMB in-store, similar products cost around 650RMB from Xiaomi, Sivga so2 open earbuds costs 360RMB, 1/3 of Freeclip'sprice, while providing similar or even better sound quality than 1299RMB Freeclip.

I had visit China twice this month and will be going again this 22 of June in Chengdu, the problem I have is that I don't have a Wechat and Alipay Account, and bringing a large amount of cash to purchase a Pura 70 is a pained in the asses.

 

[Phead128]

For Apple, I haven't checked all the details, but the logic should be sound.
1: Due to the lithography limitation in China, it looks like Apple would always have better logic and memory chips. With AI features moving to edge devices, Apple's enhanced computing power(M4 chip is a beast) becomes more appealing. Satcom/Photography noncore functions.

Apple's newest AI features Siri with GPT uses APIs , which is server-side load, not client-side load. Many AI features can be server-side load using APIs. When people say M4 chip will be AI-enabled, it means indexing documents so you can free-form text search within documents, but that is hardly a feature the average user wants or needs on a mobile device. That can be server-side load if you have documents on Huawei Cloud.

2: IOS is a much more mature and huge ecosystem, I doubt foreign App/Game developers would migrate their products to the HarmonyOS, I guess there are "emulators" that can be used to run Android apps in HarmonyOS. Lack of App/Game support is a no-go for lots of people. Unless Huawei is able to vastly ramp up advanced node production, then flooding the market with cheap, high-quality devices, without much higher market shares, very hard for HarmonyOS to compete with IOS.

HarmonyOS already eclipsed iOS marketshare in China, unless you are living under a rock, you would know Huawei regained #1 marketshare leadership in China and dethroned Apple now. So this is a hypothetical that has already been outdated. A critical mass is already achieved for developers to server the large (and lucrative) HarmonyOS ecosystem.

4: I saw some people posting on social media, with multiple discounts, Apple iPhone 15 Pro 256G is selling for around 6300RMB in China, the same price level as Mate 60 Pro, Unless people want to support Huawei, there are no compelling reasons to buy Huawei over Apple when they are on the same price level.

Price discounts didn't help Tesla maintain marketshare in China's highly competitive EV car market, Tesla is absolutely getting destroyed in China despite race-to-bottom price discounts. So that does not bode well for Apple's strategy if Tesla's price war is any example.

If you are a light phone user, just check social media posts or watch videos on TikTok, any phone would do the job, won't notice any difference.

Most people don't use mobile phones for gaming. Most people do actually check out email, browse internet, watch videos, and social media on their mobile phones. Are you expecting people to do data analysis or programing on their mobile devices? You are correct that 7nm is more than sufficient for vast majority of users, which is why Huawei toppled Apple in China marketshare.

 

[curiouscat]

@curiouscat could you please get us this one?

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I think UniSOC needs to be like MediaTek asap in case US decides to bar other Chinese companies from using Qualcomm and MediaTek Chips

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[Oldschool]

For Apple, I haven't checked all the details, but the logic should be sound.
1: Due to the lithography limitation in China, it looks like Apple would always have better logic and memory chips. With AI features moving to edge devices, Apple's enhanced computing power(M4 chip is a beast) becomes more appealing. Satcom/Photography noncore functions.
2: IOS is a much more mature and huge ecosystem, I doubt foreign App/Game developers would migrate their products to the HarmonyOS, I guess there are "emulators" that can be used to run Android apps in HarmonyOS. Lack of App/Game support is a no-go for lots of people. Unless Huawei is able to vastly ramp up advanced node production, then flooding the market with cheap, high-quality devices, without much higher market shares, very hard for HarmonyOS to compete with IOS.
3: Global after-sale support and brand awareness, I doubt people can get after-sale service outside of China.
4: I saw some people posting on social media, with multiple discounts, Apple iPhone 15 Pro 256G is selling for around 6300RMB in China, the same price level as Mate 60 Pro, Unless people want to support Huawei, there are no compelling reasons to buy Huawei over Apple when they are on the same price level.

If you are a light phone user, just check social media posts or watch videos on TikTok, any phone would do the job, won't notice any difference.

For Nivida,
1: H20 and 910B prices similarly in China, 910B maybe slightly faster, but H20 is manufactured by TSMC with better processing nodes, H20 should be more mature and stable.
2: Nivida's CUDA ecosystem is so entrenched, without the geopolitical risk factors, so much easier to build your system with CUDA. Recently some news mentioned some big tech companies are planning to build data centers in the West (or rent AI chips) to avoid the sanctions in order to buy Nivida's chips.

Apple dropping big in China this year. Maybe more than 25%. Huawei reclaims as top maker inside China. Oversea , the ones turning to Huawei is for security not performance. CIA can't spy on Huawei phones. Whatever apple has on advanced nm is not applicable. Also Huawei satellite phone feature is a plus which Apple lacks.

As for Nvidia, Chinese customers not happy with the watered down versions and government also told them not to use Nvidia.
They are turning to Huawei ascend.

There are not anything that's hot sell for US companies in world market currently.

Instead they are erecting all kinds of tariffs against hot sell Chinese EVs. Both US and EU.

 

[gabriel.shenton]

Apple dropping big in China this year. Maybe more than 25%. Huawei reclaims as top maker inside China. Oversea , the ones turning to Huawei is for security not performance. CIA can't spy on Huawei phones. Whatever apple has on advanced nm is not applicable. Also Huawei satellite phone feature is a plus which Apple lacks.

As for Nvidia, Chinese customers not happy with the watered down versions and government also told them not to use Nvidia.
They are turning to Huawei ascend.

There are not anything that's hot sell for US companies in world market currently.

Instead they are erecting all kinds of tariffs against hot sell Chinese EVs. Both US and EU.

1: with the deep discounts Apple is offering now in China, I believe Apple's products are more competitive than Huawei's if we don't consider the national pride factors, let's see in the coming months whether Apple's market shares would increase, I remember there was a post from Reuters recently saying sales in China is improving, must means the price cut is working somehow. All phones are spying devices, just who is listening.

2: as for Nvidia, I've read similar news, but I am thinking it could be just 20% truth to these news. With Nvidia's revenue beating every quarter, and China is an big AI chip market, it seems logical that Chinese companies are renting AI chips from AWS or other cloud providers in the West, likely even buying H100 chips directly via third countries. If the entire Chinese market is walking away from Nvidia, it doesn't make sense Nvidia is beating revenue every time.

 

[SanWenYu]

As for Nvidia, Chinese customers not happy with the watered down versions and government also told them not to use Nvidia.
They are turning to Huawei ascend.

For those who need CUDA compatibility, there is also Moore Threads who has recently certified its computation clusters of “thousands of cards” for a few Chinese large language models.

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摩尔线程全国产夸娥千卡智算集群在大模型训练上展现出足够的实力。摩尔线程夸娥方案基于全功能MTT S4000 GPU，提供软硬一体化的全栈解决方案，具备模型覆盖、推理加速、CUDA兼容、断点续训、分布式训练、集群可靠性等8大核心能力。

MTT S4000是摩尔线程推出的大模型智算加速卡，采用第三代MUSA内核，单卡支持48GB显存容量和768GB/s的显存带宽，FP16算力为100TFLOPS。借助摩尔线程自研开发工具，MTT S4000计算卡可以充分利用现有CUDA软件生态，实现CUDA代码零成本迁移到MUSA平台。

 

[Oldschool]

1: with the deep discounts Apple is offering now in China, I believe Apple's products are more competitive than Huawei's if we don't consider the national pride factors, let's see in the coming months whether Apple's market shares would increase, I remember there was a post from Reuters recently saying sales in China is improving, must means the price cut is working somehow. All phones are spying devices, just who is listening.

2: as for Nvidia, I've read similar news, but I am thinking it could be just 20% truth to these news. With Nvidia's revenue beating every quarter, and China is an big AI chip market, it seems logical that Chinese companies are renting AI chips from AWS or other cloud providers in the West, likely even buying H100 chips directly via third countries. If the entire Chinese market is walking away from Nvidia, it doesn't make sense Nvidia is beating revenue every time.

Apple is down to single digit in China market.
Probably around 8 to 9 percent. They are banned in state and government sectors.

Good for Nvidia beating revenue.
But what's has to do with China. Maybe more from the democratic countries.
It's dropping from 25% market shares in China down to mid single digit.
The trend is probably irreversible.

You probably should place more hope on likes of Japan, south Korea rather than China.

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[tonyget]

Most people don't use mobile phones for gaming.

Speak for yourself. The vast majority of young people play games on phone，including girls

 

[Sincho]

Looks like there's competition to Tsinghua SSMB from both Japan and the US. The race is on!

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[SDFlurker]

If you are a light phone user, just check social media posts or watch videos on TikTok, any phone would do the job, won't notice any difference.

1) The majority of people would fall under this category, so it really doesn't matter whether an iPhone's specs are marginally/significantly better as long as the performance feels 'good enough'. The rest is up to the consumers own perception of brand and value; Huawei has that 'David vs Goliath' vibe going for them and appeals to patriotism, Apple is still associated with being a luxury brand/status symbol (although talking with relatives/friends in China it seems Huawei is already there as well). Case in point; Huawei regaining the top spot in the CN market.

2) In terms of games on mobile, it's not even about whether or not foreign game devs(assuming you're talking about traditional AAA studios and not the devs of things like Candy Crush, Coinmaster...) would migrate to HarmonyOS but rather when they stop viewing mobile game development as beneath them. Most mobile games that get churned out by Western and JP studios are the laziest cashgrabs imaginable and of the ones that aren't, if you dig a little you'll see that they're co-developed with a CN studio e.g. Diablo Immortal (Netease), Warframe (Netease), Wildrift (a Tencent subsidiary)... just off the top of my head. Imo, I wouldn't worry about the game dev aspect on Harmony since it's mostly CN devs that are pushing and pioneering mobile game dev and iirc all the major players have already signed onto HarmonyOS. In terms of other apps it's too early to tell; if Huawei does make a global resurgence and it looks like they're there to stay for good this time, I doubt devs will forego such a huge market.

3) Again too early to tell and depends on Huawei's global strategy

4) For 5500 rmb you can get yourself the standard Pura 70, for 6000 rmb you can get the Pura 70 512g and for 6500 rmb you can get a Pura 70 pro. And for the cheap cheap price of 0 rmb you can get yourself the satisfaction of not supporting iShit. So I can see plenty of reasons for choosing Huawei and even more for not buying iShit.