(Text/Cheng Wenzhi) According to Frost & Sullivan statistics, China’s analog chip market accounts for more than 50% of the global market, making it the world’s most important analog chip consumer market, and its growth rate is higher than the overall growth rate of the global analog chip market. The latest data from WSTS shows that the global analog chip market will be worth $74 billion in 2021.
Figure: Classification of power management chips (Data source: Frost & Sullivan)
In the analog chip market, there is a relatively large category, that is, the power management chip, which mainly refers to the circuit that manages the battery and electric energy, and is a key device in electronic equipment. According to the functional classification, the main functions of the power management chip include battery charge and discharge management, monitoring and protection, power form and voltage and current conversion (including AC/DC conversion, DC/DC conversion and other forms). As one of the key devices, power management chips are widely used in various fields such as household appliances, mobile phones, tablets, chargers and adapters, smart meters, lighting, power tools, industrial control equipment, and communication equipment.
According to Frost & Sullivan statistics, China’s power management chip market will exceed 80 billion yuan in 2020, accounting for about 35.9% of the global market share. In the next few years, with the expansion of domestic power management chips in household appliances, 3C emerging products and other fields, it is expected that the market size of domestic power management chips will continue to grow rapidly. It is estimated that from 2020 to 2025, the market size of China’s power management chips will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.7%, and will reach a market size of US$23.45 billion by 2025.
Today, we will mainly talk about the main players in the AC-DC segment. At present, this market is characterized by a high degree of concentration. The main players are mainly companies from Europe, America and Taiwan, including ST, TI, NXP, ROHM , ON Semiconductor, Infineon, MPS, Pucheng Technology, Richtek Technology, etc. However, under the background of policy support and Sino-US trade friction in recent years, domestic AC-DC chip design companies have gradually risen in the fiercely competitive market, and the gap between the overall technical level and foreign design companies has been narrowing. Products developed by design companies have gradually replaced the share of foreign competitors in many application markets, especially the consumer electronics market in the medium and small power segment. Let’s take a look at the domestic design companies that have performed well in recent years.
Chippeng Micro: Based on home appliances, extending to industrial control
Founded in 2005, Chippeng Microelectronics is a semiconductor company in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province. It is an IC design company focusing on power management chips. Its products include AC-DC chips, DC-DC chips, gate driver chips, etc. Its products are widely used. It is used in household appliances, mobile digital and industrial control fields, and has been successfully imported into leading end customers such as Midea, Gree, Hikvision, ZTE, and Huawei.
Chippeng Micro provides 1~24W non-isolated Buck/Boost, isolated Flyback/PSR and other AC-DC products for household appliances, which convert the AC power of the grid into DC power that can be used by small home appliance terminals. Generally speaking, a single AC-DC chip is usually used for a small home appliance, and some home appliances use a synchronous buck regulator and other products to power the WiFi module.
Major appliance manufacturers have high requirements for the stability of supply chain products, which makes the major appliance supply chain monopolized by overseas chip manufacturers before the Sino-US trade friction. In 2015, Chippeng Micro began to test in the major appliance manufacturer Midea, but the revenue volume has been small; benefiting from the increasing demand for localization of the supply chain of major appliance manufacturers, the revenue of the major appliance business of Chippeng Micro in 2020Q4 began to increase.
Now, as the market share of consumer AC-DCs has been gradually occupied by domestic chip manufacturers, the localization of superimposed semiconductors is entering the deep-water area of overcoming difficulties. High-end track development.
Chippone’s industrial driver chips include 800V intelligent protection AC-DC power chip series, 1000~1200V industrial AC-DC power chip series, zero-watt standby AC-DC industrial power chip series, 600V floating gate drive power chip series, etc. It is widely used in mid-to-high-end fields such as intelligent circuit breakers, communication equipment, and servers, and has been successfully introduced into industry benchmarking companies such as Chint Electric, Shengfan Co., Ltd., Welling Electric, Dayang Electric, and Jingma Electric.
Shanghai Belling: Develop fast charging market
After Shanghai Belling completed the acquisition of Nanjing Weimeng in 2020, it expanded the power management chip production line. In the same year, the power management chip business became the company’s largest business. Its power management products are rich in variety and cover a wide range. By launching new power management products, it expands its share on the basis of the original market and occupies new fields.
According to the company’s announcement, its AC-DC products have increased its market share in the fast charging market, with general-purpose fast consumer power supply charging heads accounting for most of the market share, with monthly shipments reaching 10 million units. The company’s benchmark source products have achieved a monthly shipment of 20 million pieces, becoming the main supplier of domestic benchmarks.
Jingfeng Mingyuan: AC-DC product line acquired
Jingfeng Mingyuan has also officially started to develop AC-DC power management chips through the acquisition of Lion Semiconductor from 2020, and has devoted itself to the field of home appliances and fast charging. Based on the technology accumulation of LED lighting drive and motor drive, the company established the AC-DC business unit in 2020, and focused on the built-in AC-DC power supply chip for home appliances and the layout of external AC/DC power supply used in chargers and adapters.
While maintaining the leading edge of the existing LED lighting driver chips, Jingfeng Mingyuan has developed built-in AC/DC power chips and external AC/DC power chips for large and small home appliances. On June 10, 2021, Jingfeng Mingyuan launched a 20W cost-effective fast charging power source set. The set is composed of BP8706D primary integrated chip + BP6216 synchronous rectification chip, which can realize a highly integrated 20W switching power supply scheme. Among them, BP8706D has built-in high-voltage startup, has ultra-low standby power consumption, and built-in soft-start, supports light-load frequency hopping mode, improves light-load efficiency and reduces standby power consumption, and the chip supports CCM and DCM working modes. In terms of external AC-DC, since the external AC-DC fast charging technology and LED lighting are both high-current AC/DC power management chips, Jingfeng Mingyuan is expected to rely on its own process platform advantages and supply chain advantages in the future to respond quickly market demand.
Epilogue
In addition, Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics, Mao Ruixin, Nanxin Semiconductor, Angbao, etc. also have AC-DC related products. In fact, there are many excellent AC-DC chip companies in China, but the current market share is not high. One may be that their current product categories are not rich enough. After all, many power chips need to be customized, and different application scenarios are suitable for Power chips have different requirements; another may be related to their late entry into the market. After all, the analog chip market is largely based on experience. But in any case, I hope their development will become more and more smooth.