FEER(8/28)Chinese Cellphone Explosion Aids Foreign Parts Cos
RISING FROM nowhere two years ago, China's mobile-phone makers have shocked the wireless industry by grabbing nearly half the sales in their home market -- the world's largest with 243 million subscribers -- from the multinational giants. While that unnerves the likes of Motorola and Nokia, here's the real surprise: The explosive emergence of the Chinese phone makers has also boosted the bottom lines of many companies in the United States, Europe and elsewhere in Asia.
That's because only a handful of China's 25 domestic makers actually design and produce a mobile phone from scratch. Instead, they purchase most of the components from other manufacturers, chip makers, design firms and distributors, and then sell the phones under their own brands.
For instance, most of the mobile phones made by TCL International Holdings, one of China's largest producers, use chipsets designed by France's Wavecom. TCL, which expects to ship 9 million units this year, gained worldwide attention last year by wrapping one model in fake diamonds. Haier Group's eye-catching, pen-shaped mobile phone with built-in laser pointer, which started selling earlier this year, is based on a chipset from Taiwan's Compal Electronics.
By leaving the heavy engineering to other companies and working chiefly on the look and feel of a phone (such as user-friendly screen displays and menu content), the Chinese companies can churn out a new model in as little as six months. Compare that, say, to Nokia, which takes a year or two to design a new model from basic circuitry on up. Domestic manufacturers accounted for 58 of the 81 new cellphone models launched in China during the second quarter, according to the government agency that oversees the industry.
The Chinese companies' speedy product development is one key to standing out in a very crowded market. "They're less worried about the guts of the phone and more about how to enable the performance," says David Aldrich, chief executive officer of Skyworks Solutions. China is now the largest market for the Woburn, Massachusetts-based maker of power-amplifier and other chips for mobile phones.
Nor does speed mean shoddy goods. A U.S. consultant who recently dissected several dozen Chinese handsets says he was surprised by what he saw. "This was not the backwater of handset development I think it was sometimes perceived to be," says David Carey, president of Portelligent, a firm in Austin, Texas, that issues reports on the technical designs of electronic products. "It was a relatively well-engineered set of products that took advantage of Western components."
Of course, even the 12 multinational companies that manufacture in China design most of their phones elsewhere. And electronics makers commonly buy product designs and components from each other, particularly when new technology is involved. In mobile phones, however, the Chinese are accelerating a change that Korean and Taiwanese companies pioneered a few years ago. Instead of relying on long-term relationships with a few suppliers, as Motorola and Nokia did to become global leaders, the Chinese buy components from a broad array of firms. As a result, Chinese cellphone makers are opening up new opportunities to many technology suppliers that were minor players in the wireless industry.
"What is happening today is a major discontinuity in the way cellphones are designed," says Dan Artusi, president of Silicon Laboratories Inc., an Austin, Texas-based maker of chips that create the radio signal in a phone. His company opened an office in Shanghai earlier this year to support a growing number of Chinese customers. Bigger companies such as Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Broadcom Corp., Siemens and Agere Systems have also moved beyond selling chips to selling nearly complete cellphones.
Even Motorola, which invented cellphones 20 years ago and remains the market leader in China, is getting in on the action. From an industrial park in Hong Kong, Motorola for the past year has developed and sold cellphone chipsets, software and design tools to 17 other manufacturers, including six in China. Its designs range from basic, voice-only models to the latest, third-generation phones with colour screens and still and videocamera capabilities. All rely on Motorola chips for the most important functions -- signal processing, radio transmission, power amplification and program memory. "We can help expand the market and capture some of the growth of the new players for ourselves," says Stephen Tsao , who's in charge of marketing Motorola's chipsets.
These changes mean that assembling a cellphone is getting closer to building a personal computer -- something that companies without much technical expertise can do using standard, widely available parts. Although the variety of frequencies, transmission standards and demands of operators still make cellphones more complex to build, each new generation of chips is making it simpler. Today's models typically contain 125-150 chips that fit in a space half the size of a business card. That's down from 600 chips stretched over a larger circuit board four years ago.
In China, another force is at work to give domestic manufacturers a competitive advantage: the government's desire for world-class stature in every basic industry. The national government controls many of the country's electronics manufacturers, subsidizing their losses, while provincial and local governments favour manufacturers that operate and pay taxes in their jurisdictions.
Most of China's mobile-phone makers got started by purchasing and re-labelling phones made in Taiwan and Korea. After the Chinese companies built assembly lines and developed software skills, they began to buy designs and modules from chip makers and distributors. But the Chinese won't always rely on overseas suppliers for the core technology and designs. Already, some are starting to design high-end models that will allow them to make more money on each unit.
Ningbo Bird Co., China's largest-volume cellphone maker, now designs the software in many of its phones, though it still relies on France's Sagem, Germany's Siemens and others for chipsets. Legend Group, China's largest PC maker, is a relatively small player in mobile phones, shipping just 300,000 in the second quarter of this year. But the firm earlier this month unveiled the first handset it designed from scratch: a HK$5,300 ($680) model with Chinese-character recognition and a colour-screen organizer based on Microsoft's Pocket PC software.
Eventually, Chinese makers of phones and other electronics will be able to count on China's own chip makers, which are bound to advance to a level where they can compete with overseas suppliers. "It's going to happen, and why not?" says Lothar Pauly, chief operating officer of Siemens. "It's the biggest semiconductor market in the world."
中国手机生产蕴含无限商机
中国手机生产商两年前还默默无闻，但现在的销售额已占到国内市场的近一半，从国际巨头手中抢走了半壁江山。这令无线通信行业颇为震惊，摩托罗拉(Motorola)和诺基亚(Nokia)等国际巨头也大为不安，但真正出乎其意料的是，中国手机生产商的迅速崛起也让美国、欧洲和亚洲其他国家的很多公司从中受益。
这是因为中国的25家手机厂商中，只有很少几家是从头至尾自行完成手机的设计和生产。相反，手机生产所需的大多数零部件都是从其他生产商、晶片生产商、设计公司和分销商购得，然后以厂商自己的品牌销售。
比如，中国最大的手机厂商之一－TCL国际控股有限公司(TCL International Holdings Ltd., H.TCL, 简称：TCL国际)生产的多数手机就是使用法国Wavecom设计的晶片组。 TCL国际预计该公司今年的手机出货量将达900万部。该公司去年因推出一款镶嵌人造钻石的手机而受到国际关注。海尔集团(Haier Group)今年早些时候推出的一款笔形手机非常抢眼，并配有内置镭射笔，该款手机采用的则是台湾仁宝电脑(Compal Electronics Inc.)生产的晶片组。
中国手机生产商将繁杂的手机设计工作留给他人，而自己主要在手机的外观和感觉方面（如设计便于使用的屏幕显示和菜单设置等）做文章，这一做法使其最短只需6个月就可推出一款新手机，而诺基亚则需要1-2年才能完成一款新手机从头至尾的设计。据中国政府的主管部门称，第二季度在中国市场推出的81种新款手机中，有58种是中国国内厂商生产的。
中国公司产品开发迅速是其在对手林立的市场上得以独树一帜的关键所在。功放产品和手机晶片生产商Skyworks Solutions的首席执行长奥尔德里奇(David Aldrich)说，中国厂家不太在意手机的内在东西，而更多关心的是其功能如何。中国现已成为Skyworks Solutions的最大市场。
中国手机生产商在生产速度快的同时，也保证了产品质量。 最近，美国Portelligent公司总裁凯里(David Carey)拆解了几十部中国产手机，并就其技术设计问题发表了一份报告。他说，他对自己看到的情况大吃一惊。中国手机并非他原先认为的那样落后，中国手机采用了西方国家生产的元件，整个产品还是相当不错的。
当然，即便是在中国有生产业务的12家跨国公司，其多数手机的设计工作都是在其他地方进行的。电子产品生产商通常相互购买产品设计和元件，特别是那些采用了新技术的设计和元件。但在手机生产方面，中国公司正在加快由韩国和台湾公司几年前率先发起的变革。
中国手机生产商不像摩托罗拉和诺基亚那样，为了成为全球业界老大，依赖于同很少的一些供应商之间的长期合作。中国公司从各种各样的公司那里购买元件，从而给很多原本在无线通信业界无足轻重的技术供应商带来了商机。
美国手机晶片生产商Silicon Laboratories Inc.的总裁阿尔图西(Dan Artusi)说，如今的手机设计模式已经发生重大变化。 该公司今年早些时候在上海开设了办事处，为众多的中国客户提供支持服务。德州仪器(Texas Instruments)、 Analog Devices、Broadcom Corp.、西门子(Siemens)以及Agere Systems等规模较大的公司也已经不再只是出售晶片，而是将业务扩大至销售准成品手机。
即使是20年前发明了手机，现在仍占据中国市场领先地位的摩托罗拉也开始行动起来。该公司的香港工业园去年开发并向17个厂商，其中包括6家中国公司，销售了手机晶片组、软件和设计工具。其设计从仅供通话的基本机型到最新的第三代彩屏静态拍摄手机，不一而足。
所有手机的一些最重要的功能，如信号处理、无线传输、功放和程序记忆等，都依赖于摩托罗拉的晶片。摩托罗拉晶片组营销主管Stephen Tsao说，摩托罗拉可以帮助扩大市场，并从新公司的增长中受益。
这些变化意味著生产手机越来越像组装个人电脑，手机厂商可以不需要多少技术经验，就能够使用标准的、随处可得的元件组装手机。虽然手机所使用的频率、传输标准、以及电信运营商的要求不尽相同，这使得手机生产较为复杂，但每个新一代晶片的出现都使得手机生产变得更为容易。现在，一般的手机都含有125-150只晶片，总共只有半张名片的大小。而在4年以前，还需要600只晶片散布在更大的电路板上。
还有一种因素使得中国手机生产商获得了竞争优势，这就是，中国政府希望中国的每一项基础行业都能够达到世界水平。中央政府控制著很多电子企业，并向其提供补贴，而地方政府则对在其辖区内生产和纳税的企业给予优待。
大多数中国手机厂家起步时靠的是从台湾和韩国购买成品，重新贴牌后销售。这些厂家在组装线建成和掌握了相关的软件技术后，就开始从晶片生产商和分销商那里购买设计和模块。但中国厂家在核心技术和设计方面不会总是依赖外国供应商，一些企业已经开始设计获利更多的高端产品。
中国销量最大的手机厂商－宁波波导公司(Ningbo Bird Co.)在晶片组上虽然仍依赖于法国的Sagem和德国西门子等海外公司，但其很多手机的软件设计都是自行开发的。
联想集团(Legend Group)的手机业务规模较小，今年第二季度的发货量仅为30万部， 但该公司本月早些时候推出了其完全自主设计的首款手机。这款售价为5,300港元（合680美元）的手机拥有汉字识别功能，其操作系统采用的是微软(Microsoft)Pocket PC软件。
终有一天，中国手机和其他电子产品生产商将能够依靠中国自己的晶片生产商，进行设计和生产。中国晶片生产商也定将达到能够与外国公司展开竞争的水平。西门子的首席营运长保利(Lothar Pauly)说，这一天肯定会到来，中国现在已经是世界最大的半导体市场。
