Zhanrui recruitment

The research and development of Xiaomi is really "ruthless"

The mobile phone industry can be said to be the most competitive industry, and there are many hand-to-hand battles among peers. Behind the truth and falsehood, there are more fakes;

Therefore, in order to prove themselves, the head enterprises in this industry will deliberately emphasize the word "true"; Such as "True" flagship, "True" 5G and "True" full screen. ......

With the help of the Internet model, Xiaomi became the first in China and the top three in the world within three years, and then its reputation was quickly discredited. After that, it grew against the trend again, becoming the second in the world, surpassing Apple last quarter.

Although Xiaomi's performance is "outstanding", in recent years, there are many labels that lack core technology and do not pay attention to research and development; What's more, they maliciously attacked Xiaomi as a fake (inferior) domestic product, a comprador and a traitor. ......

Among them, Xiaomi's R&D investment is too small. The core of the mobile phone-the operating system comes from Google in the United States, the chip comes from Qualcomm in the United States, and the screen and image come from Samsung in South Korea ... Huawei, which is often used as a reference, is not only the HiSilicon Kirin chip, but also the operating system of HarmonyOS, which has the appeal of pulling down Apple in the high-end user market.

However, in business, it is a brilliant strategy to define the label of "unwarranted" for opponents and make them tired of being criticized in the whirlpool of public opinion. Although rude, it is not expensive, simple and effective.

What's more, compared with friends, Xiaomi, who has always claimed to be an Internet company, has been spending more than double digits on R&D in the Internet camp. Xiaomi has been spending three points on R&D, which is really low, although it is denser than hardware and traditional household appliances. But if Xiaomi really wants to have black technology, it is not necessary to increase R&D investment, but it must increase R&D investment.

Therefore, we can see the financial report data of Xiaomi in the first half of this year. In 20021year, Xiaomi invested RMB 3 1 billion in R&D, up 56.5% year-on-year. Xiaomi's net profit in the second quarter was 6.3 billion, which is equivalent to nearly half of Xiaomi's R&D profit, from 20021the first half of the year.50080.000000000606

This is not the equity incentive plan that Lei Jun caused the shock of the scientific and technological community. For example, the title of this article is: "4.3 billion in five days, three employees in a row" red envelopes ",Lei Jun: talent is the cornerstone of Xiaomi's take-off in the new decade"

Recruit mobile phone chip experts

In the letter to shareholders issued by the official WeChat official account, Lei Jun said: Obviously, Xiaomi will continue to implement the core strategy of "mobile phone XIAOT" on 202 1 and increase R&D investment. (202 1) is expected to increase by more than 30%, and it is expected to exceed1300 million yuan. We will further expand the scale of the R&D team and recruit more than 5,000 engineers this year.

Invest in ten key research areas respectively. Among the ten key areas, there are 5G and 6G communication standard technologies, but there is no operating system technology, and the SOC chip technology of mobile phones is not among them. In particular, Yan Xiaotong, the founding partner of Guo Song Electronics, who was in charge of Xiaomi Chip, left to be the head of Ziguang Zhanrui Pan-Connection Business Management Department, and Bai Jian, the general manager of Xiaomi Chip and Prospective Research Department, also left to join Weilai Automobile on June 5438+065438+ 10. The two core generals of Xiaomi Chip have left their posts one after another, which makes many people think that Xiaomi's chip is cold, so the public opinion that Xiaomi will not invest in chip research and development is boiling again, although Xiaomi's individual channels or Lei Jun himself said that Xiaomi's chip is still going on and has disappeared from the public opinion of the assembly plant with no core technology compared with the huge Xiaomi.

However, Xiaomi's chip continues. According to the recruitment requirements of Xiaomi official website, following the recruitment of the position of "Mobile Phone Department-Hardware R&D -SoC Technical Planning Expert" on March 8th this year, the positions of "SoC Software Solution Engineer", "SOC Design Engineer", "SOC Methodology Engineer" and "SOC System Engineer (SE)" were released in September.

Chip research and development is a project with high investment, slow return and high risk, especially mobile phone chips, which are the technical commanding heights in chip research and development.

SoC is a "system on a chip" that integrates various processors. For example, Qualcomm provides SoC to mobile phone manufacturers. If CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the brain, then SoC is a system including brain, heart, eyes and hands, which integrates AP (application chip, including CPU and GPU), BP (baseband chip), ISP and other chips.

At present, only a few enterprises in the world, such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and Ziguang Zhanrui, have the ability to design the SoC of mobile phones.

Among the global mobile phone manufacturers, only Samsung, Apple and Huawei have the chip R&D and design capabilities for successful mass production and tens of millions of commercial products. Although Xiaomi has successfully mass-produced a "2855438+0" before, due to its own technical limitations, it only supports mobile networks, and the heat control is not good, resulting in a dull market response.

Later, the "surging" chip S2 always listened to media reports, but did not see the real thing.

However, according to Xiaomi's latest recruitment information, the recruitment location of mobile phone SOC chip research and development is in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, and its friends are not only Huawei, but also OPPO Research Institute, a upstart chip research and development. It is reported that Zeku, the chip subsidiary of OPPO, has grown from about 1000 at the end of 2020 to nearly 2,000 today, with some employees from Huawei Hisilicon, Ziguang Zhanrui and some Taiwan Province semiconductor companies. The annual salary of five chip engineers above ZEKUs is about 500,000, that is, the basic R&D annual salary of OPPO main chip engineers is about 800 million.

At present, among the top four domestic mobile phones of Huami OV, only Xiaomi is a listed company and needs to publish financial reports regularly. The other top three only need to know their own psychology, whether to invest in R&D at a loss or make a big profit.

Compared with Huawei's direct pressure to invest in chip research and development, OPPO adopts the experience similar to Xiaomi and wants to start with ISP chips (pictures). For example, Xiaomi will launch the self-developed "2855438+0" chip in Xiaomi's MIX FOLD folding screen mobile phone, which is the most expensive high-end mass-produced folding screen mobile phone in Xiaomi.

Recently, it is rumored that OPPO's ISP chip has also been successfully streamed, and it may be carried on the Find X5 mobile phone released in the first half of 2022. Because there are many articles titled "OPPO's first self-developed chip is released, and its performance is soaring C 1?" 》

In fact, compared with SOC chip, ISP chip can be said to be only an integral part of system chip, so Xiaomi, who has been a chip for seven years, said it was a small chip when it was released, because both Xiaomi and OPPO have to successfully design SOC chips, and there are still many pits to cross, so be prepared to invest a lot of money.

Mobile phone sales surpassed Apple's second in the world, and the consumer Internet of Things ranked first in the world. If Xiaomi, the youngest of the world's top 500, wants to challenge Samsung and become the world's number one in three years, he must also come up with his own real "black technology".

Fortunately, from Huawei, to Xiaomi, to VIVO and OPPO, we really felt the urgency of developing core technologies, and they all started their nuclear journey.

A good beginning is half the battle.

Who do you expect to be the "domestic light" of mobile phone chips in China?