Chapter 104 Domestic Touch IC

Chapter 104 Domestic Touch IC

Chapter 104 Domestic Touch IC
In terms of touch IC, Zhiyun Technology had been troubled by a lot of trouble before, but later it shamelessly found Synaptics and purchased their touch IC.

However, in the following months, although Zhiyun Technology had been trying to obtain a second touch IC supplier, it had not been successful.

The main reason is that this thing is not easy to do. There are not many companies that can do it, and even fewer that can do it well.

At present, Synaptics is the best in touch IC. Apple, Zhiyun, Meizu and other capacitive touch smartphones all use Synaptics' touch IC.

It is no exaggeration to say that it has achieved a de facto monopoly.

It’s not that there are no other touch ICs, but other companies’ products are not very good!

However, this situation poses too great a supply risk for Zhiyun Technology... Zhiyun Technology purchases its core products, such as SOC chips and communication basebands, from two suppliers at the same time, but for touch screen ICs, it still only has one supplier, Synaptics.

In order to solve the problem of touch IC supply, Zhiyun Technology looked all over the world for a second supplier, but the foreign suppliers were not very good and there were no ready-made, mature and available solutions.

In this situation, after Xu Shenxue heard that Qianding Technology was developing touch screen ICs, he thought that instead of looking for a half-baked foreign manufacturer to act as a backup, it would be better to directly support Qianding Technology.

Therefore, in April, Zhiyun Technology, which had already obtained a large amount of financing and obtained a large amount of funds after the large-scale sales of its mobile phones, made a large strategic investment in Qianding Technology through its investment department.

This kind of strategic investment is not as simple as providing funds and shares, but more importantly, it is about supporting orders... Xu Shenxue has made a personal promise to the CEO of Qianding Technology. As long as the product is manufactured, the performance is not too bad, and the cost is controlled within a certain range, it is hard to say about Zhiyun mobile phones, but Qianding Technology's touch IC will definitely have a place in the mid- and low-end models of Weiku Electronics.

In addition to private commitments, there are also letters of intent and the like.

It is precisely because of this that Qianding Technology accepted the strategic investment and worked overtime for research and development over the past period of time. In order to mass-produce the new mobile phone before Weiku Electronics released it, they adopted a multi-threaded research and development model...

That is, several design teams design and develop different touch IC chips at the same time, and then conduct wafer testing at the same time. Although this is more expensive, the cycle is shorter.

Under normal circumstances, it may take half a year to tape out a chip, but they tape out a chip once a month... Of course, the cost is also far higher than the normal situation.

To put it bluntly, this is just exchanging money for time, but there is no question of R&D cost-effectiveness. Under normal circumstances, few companies would do this.

But...Weiku Electronics' new product will be released in August, and mass production planning will start in June at the latest. If Qianding Technology cannot catch up with this, they will have to wait until the next generation of new models next year.

They are more anxious than Xu Shenxue!

Finally, after spending a lot of money and relying on this multi-threaded accelerated research and development, Qianding Technology finally developed the touch IC...

Xu Shenxue was also very happy about the news.

This means that Zhiyun Technology and Weiku Electronics will be able to obtain a second touch IC supplier, and it will be a domestic supplier.

This may be just a small step for the localization of Zhiyun Mobile's supply chain, but it is a step of great significance.

Because this means that although domestic suppliers are less powerful and have less money, as long as Xu Shenxue is willing to provide certain support, some of their companies will still be able to bring surprises to himself!

What's more important is that no matter what the price of Qianding Technology's touch IC is, it will be cheaper than Synaptics' touch IC, which is also of great significance to reducing the hardware cost of Weiku Electronics' mid- and low-end mobile phones.

In order to express his importance to the domestic supply chain, Xu Shenxue personally visited Qianding Technology and saw the freshly-made touch IC chips in their laboratory.

Judging from the appearance alone... this thing is actually very small and inconspicuous.

However, such a small gadget has stumped a large number of chip manufacturers in the world, who have to watch Synaptics take the lion's share.

Among the many domestic chip design manufacturers, only Qianding Technology has sufficient technical capabilities, funds and even determination to do this.

And the fact that it was done so smoothly is inseparable from the assistance of Zhiyun Technology's chip R&D engineering team.

In addition to financial and order support, Zhiyun Technology's strategic investment in Qianding Technology also includes technical support.

Zhiyun Semiconductor has mobilized a research and development team of dozens of people to coordinate and help them with their research and development...and this chip assistance research and development team has a C-level project backbone and a group of D-level research and development personnel.

Its R&D efficiency is very high.

Only through cooperation between the two parties can many problems be solved quickly, and then intensive tape-out can be carried out, and finally the design and manufacture of usable samples can be completed.

At this time, someone from Qianding Technology said to Xu Shenxue: "Mr. Xu, our multi-touch IC currently supports ten-point touch. From a technical perspective, it can meet the needs of almost all current application scenarios. In terms of hardware cost, we can also be cheaper than our foreign counterparts!" "Now that the tape-out has been successful, we expect that the foundry will be able to start mass production next month!"

After saying this, the former head of Ding Technology looked at Xu Shenxue eagerly...

You know, the reason why they spent huge manpower and material resources, and even gave up part of the company's shares, was all for the orders from Zhiyun Technology and Wecoo Electronics.

They don’t expect to get orders for high-end machines from Zhiyun Technology for the time being, but they will definitely get orders for mid- and low-end machines from Weiku Electronics at all costs.

Xu Shenxue would naturally not just look at a sample and then agree to place an order directly...that was impossible.

Even if we want to support domestic suppliers, we must ensure that the product performance, quality and price meet the requirements before placing an order.

It doesn’t mean that just because your product is a domestic product, nor because Zhiyun Technology has acquired 13% of Qianding Technology’s shares through strategic investment, we will directly place the order.

If the performance of spare parts affects Weiku Electronics' smartphone strategy, the loss will be huge.

That's not a loss of one or two hundred million, but at least one billion!

So Xu Shenxue thought about it and said, "I'll ask the people from Weiku Electronics to come and take a look. If the product can really meet all the standards, the order will be inevitable!"

"Whether it's our Zhiyun or Weiku, it's well known that we support the domestic supply chain. You don't have to worry about that. All you have to do is make your products well and control costs!"

"Don't worry, just do your job well, and the rest will follow naturally!"

Xu Shenxue later watched the demonstration of their experimental machine. Perhaps in order to impress Xu Shenxue, they still used the Zhiyun C1 prototype for the demonstration.

Their engineers replaced Synaptics' touch IC with their own, and then made adaptations and adjustments to produce a test machine.

Xu Shenxue also tried it out, but couldn't feel any noticeable difference...

After all, Zhiyun C1 is currently limited by system limitations and currently only supports two-point touch...even if the hardware supports it, it is useless.

As for two-point touch, it is actually impossible to reflect the many characteristics and advantages of multi-point touch IC... For example, the touch IC of Qianding Technology supports ten-point touch.

But it is not possible to test it in this C1 prototype.

However, in their dedicated testing platform, various detailed tests can be carried out, and after this test, Xu Shenxue saw the benefits of this multi-touch IC.

This thing works!

Although the technical staff around him reminded Xu Shenxue that the overall performance indicators of this touch IC still had a certain gap with those of Synaptics' touch IC, Xu Shenxue didn't care!
These slight performance differences are not obvious or even noticeable to ordinary users.

What's more, Qianding Technology's touch IC is cheaper!

So after coming out of Qianding Technology, Xu Shenxue immediately called Bai Qiwen and asked Weicoo Electronics to send engineers and supply chain personnel to Qianding Technology to conduct various tests and subsequent adaptation and research and development.

If there are no problems, you can place the order!

Qianding Technology has developed the touch screen IC, which makes Xu Shenxue very happy!
In this way, in addition to the body, there is another important spare part product in the domestic supply chain of smartphones.

The domestic production rate has increased step by step.

Taking advantage of his good mood, Xu Shenxue went to Zhiyun Semiconductor to take a look... Well, this time he didn't go to see the SOC and communication baseband.

The SOC project was too difficult, and Mei Jianye told him explicitly not to expect tape-out before next autumn...and it was not certain to be successful after tape-out. Even if it succeeded, it would only be a mid- to low-end chip, and its performance was estimated to be inferior to that of the 7227 chip.

Not to mention the communication baseband. There is no hope for the 3G communication baseband because the patents are too tightly controlled. There is some hope for 4G, but apart from the technology, the patent issue is not easy to solve. If it is really done, it will most likely infringe Qualcomm's patents...

There is no way around it. Qualcomm has directly incorporated its patents into the communication protocol standards, and several of these patents have become part of the 3G and 4G communication protocols... Unless you don't do 3G/4G, don't expect to get around it.

Of course, there are other ways. You can acquire other companies that hold corresponding patents, obtain patent authorization, and then solve this patent problem through patent exchange and other models.

(End of this chapter)