Nearly 2 billion cumulative shipments! This manufacturer breaks the monopoly of foreign chip manufacturers
Time:2023-06-17
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Source: Core Octopus Author: Joey
Wireless communication chips are the core link of the Internet of Things, and their rich connection technologies can meet the connection requirements of various scenarios.
Recently, the reporter of Core Bugs "Walking into the Industrial Chain" interviewed Yang Yueming, the marketing director of Pioneer, a representative enterprise of wireless communication chips in China, to discuss how Pioneer can advance from consumption to the Industrial internet of things market in the context of the rapid application of long-distance, low-power, ad hoc network communication technology in the smart Internet industry.
The cumulative shipment volume is nearly 2 billion pieces! ChirpIoT series products have preliminarily achieved domestic substitution for LoRa chips
It is understood that Panqi Micro was established in 2010 and is a leading domestic enterprise in the design of smart IoT and industrial Internet chips. After years of development, the company now has three major series of chip products: low-power long-distance ChirpIoT, multi-protocol, and BLE-lite, widely used in smart homes, industrial interconnections, smart cities, asset management, indoor positioning, sports and health, and so on. As of now, the cumulative shipment volume has reached nearly 2 billion pieces.
Main Downstream Application Scenarios of Panqi Micro Products
Source: Panqi Micro
In terms of low-power wide area network (LPWAN) wireless communication chips, ChirpIoT developed by Panqi Micro, including PAN3028, PAN3031, PAN3029, etc? The series of products have the characteristics of independent property rights, ultra wide coverage, extremely low power consumption, strong anti-interference, independent networking, and high cost-effectiveness. They have successfully broken the technological monopoly of foreign companies and preliminarily achieved domestic substitution for LoRa chips.
Source: Panqi Micro
Specifically, is PAN3028 a model that uses ChirpIoT? The low-power long-distance wireless transceiver chip of modulation and demodulation technology has a working frequency range of 400-510MHz, a sensitivity of -140dBm, and an output power of 22dBm. Due to its high anti-interference, low power consumption, and ultra long distance characteristics, it is the best choice for long-distance transmission and applications with high reliability requirements; And PAN3029 as the company‘s new generation ChirpIoT? A series of new products have been optimized in terms of sensitivity and power consumption, with an RX power consumption of 4.1mA, which is only about 40% of PAN3028. It is expected to be released soon.
Yang Yueming said that ChirpIoT series products use the modulation and demodulation communication technology independently developed by Pioneer. They work in the 1Ghz frequency band below, the communication distance is more than 3KM, and have extremely low power consumption. The battery service life is more than 10 years. They can be widely used in industrial monitoring, home and building automation, remote Automatic meter reading, security systems and other remote low rate industrial control scenarios. At present, this series of products has been shipped in bulk to solution providers, module manufacturers, and major customers in the power, sensor, fire protection, security, operator, meter industry. With a high gross profit level, this business has become an important component of the company‘s net profit.
With the continuous development of IoT technology, the number of IoT device terminals is also increasing day by day. However, the current market has a variety of wireless transmission protocols, and there are varying degrees of differences in technical standards and specifications among each protocol, resulting in a large number of devices with different protocols being unable to achieve interconnection and interworking. This not only invisibly increases the cost of software and hardware, but also reduces the transmission efficiency of IoT.
In this context, multi-protocol chips have gained popularity in the market due to their ability to support multiple connection methods and standards simultaneously, ushering in rapid development.
In the field of multi-protocol chips, Panqi Micro‘s self-developed PAN108X and PAN107X series chips that support wireless communication protocols such as BLE, Mesh, 2.4G, and ANT+have been launched into the market. With ultra-low power consumption technology, high-speed and long-distance wireless transmission, they can meet the needs of many scenarios such as power, sensors, tags, high-end keyboards and mice, AR/VR, sports health, smart homes, and industry.
In terms of BLE Lite series chips, Pioneer Micro adopts the simplified BLE protocol, which further reduces the power consumption and cost of the chip while communicating with BLE4.0 and above. It is very suitable for applications with simple connection requirements such as smart home, smart remote control, smart toys, intelligent body fat scales, electronic labels, Electric toothbrush, etc.
Taking the XN297L series products as an example, this chip is a single chip wireless transceiver chip working in the 2400~2.483GHz world common ISM radio band. In terms of power consumption, the chip operates at a current of 19mA in transmit mode (2dBm), 15mA in receive mode, and only 2uA in sleep mode; In terms of cost, this series of chips comes with some link layer communication protocols, which only require a small number of parameter registers to be configured for use, which is more cost-effective; In terms of performance, the chip has a reception sensitivity of -91/-87/-83dBm in 250K/1M/2M bps mode, and a maximum transmission output power of 13dBm. It has excellent anti-interference performance and high adjacent channel suppression system of the receiving filter. At present, the chip has been widely used in smart home, smart home appliances and other fields. Among them, the radio frequency transceiver chip XN297LBW used in the new air frying pan of Jiuyang has opened the intelligent milestone of the air frying pan.
Panqi Micro Classic TRX BLE-Lite Product Situation
Source: Panqi Micro
Yang Yueming pointed out that BLE Lite is a lightweight and secure 2.4G Bluetooth product formed by Panqi Micro through improved pairing and unbinding, group unpacking, group management, encryption and decryption, and security strategies. The aim is to replace some of BLE‘s application scenarios with lower costs and easier development in the vast consumer market. After more than ten years of development, the company has a leading and well-established product line in this field, and sales have maintained a stable growth trend. In addition to Jiuyang in the field of home appliances, Mattel, Hasbro, and others in the toy industry are our long-term cooperative customers in this field.
After taking a leading position in the consumer Internet of Things market, actively expand to the Industrial internet of things field with higher Gross margin
In recent years, with the continuous development of the Internet and wireless communication technology, the intelligent transformation and upgrading of traditional industries have been accelerating. According to GSMA data, the total number of global IoT connections reached 15.1 billion in 2021, and it is expected to maintain a compound growth rate of 11.45% in the next four years. By 2025, this number of connections will reach 23.3 billion, with a total revenue of $1.1 trillion.
Faced with the endless emergence of IoT applications, the wireless IoT chip industry has also ushered in historical opportunities, with continuous explosive growth in demand. According to data from the Internet of Things think tank, the global shipment of wireless short range communication chips is expected to reach 16 billion pieces in 2023, and the market size will exceed 25 billion US dollars by 2026. As the Bluetooth chip that accounts for a relatively large proportion in wireless communication chips, it is expected that the shipment volume will increase from 4.9 billion in 2022 to 7.6 billion in 2027, with a CAGR of 9%.
From the perspective of competition pattern, in the field of low-power Bluetooth chips, the main players are Nordic, Dialog (acquired by Renesas Electronics) and TI, with a combined market share of nearly 60%. Regarding the current development status of the Bluetooth chip industry, Yang Yueming stated:
Panqi Micro is one of the earliest and best companies in China to produce 2.4G Bluetooth chips. We have always been a benchmark in this field, with revenue exceeding 100 million yuan as early as around 2016. Compared with foreign Nordic, the company‘s PAN108x series products have similar performance to mainstream foreign products, with a power consumption of 300 nanoamperes in standby mode, which is only 10% lower than Nordic. However, Panqi Micro has certain advantages in price and has now optimized its power consumption. The upcoming PAN107x series chips can do better in power consumption than foreign competitors. Compared with domestic manufacturers, Panqi Micro‘s products have strong advantages in performance, power consumption, and other indicators, and have always been in the industry‘s first tier.
Source: Odia
In the field of low-power wide area Internet of Things, there are currently two different formats. One is based on some low-power wide area Internet of Things technologies that operate in the authorized frequency band, such as NB IoT; Another major category is some technologies that work in ad hoc networks or unauthorized frequency bands, such as LoRa and ChirpIoT. The former is a technology led by Semtech in the United States and has a wide market both domestically and internationally; The latter is a domestic low-power wide-area IoT underlying technology developed by Panqi Micro and with independent intellectual property rights.
Panqi Micro‘s ChirpIoT series products are directly aligned with Semtech‘s LoRa, with the PAN3028 and PAN3031 series mainly aligned with Semtech‘s SX127 series products. Compared to SX127, PAN3028 has similar sensitivity, but the bandwidth of Panqi Micro is not as narrow as it does. Panqi Micro believes that using a bandwidth of 62.5/125/250/500KHz and a speed of 0.08-21kbps is sufficient to meet the application requirements of the vast majority of low-speed scenarios.
Yang Yueming said that the PAN3029 series is benchmarking against Semtech‘s SX126 series products. Compared to the SX126, the PAN3029 product of Panqi Micro has a sensitivity of 2-3 dBm higher than it, which means that the transmission distance of Panqi Micro Chip is about 1.3 times longer than it. In addition, the spread spectrum of the chip is 5-12, with a maximum rate of 45kps and a receiving current of only 4.1 milliamperes. It has more advantages in power consumption compared to the SX126 and can greatly help customers save costs.
Source: Panqi Micro
It is worth mentioning that PAN3029 provides a roll call mechanism that divides the preamble into multiple fields and adds an ID to each segment. When the receiving end receives a complete field, the ID can identify whether it is calling itself. If it is not, it can immediately enter sleep mode. In this way, the power consumption of the entire network is greatly reduced.
PAN3029 adds a unique MAPM mode that can reduce network power consumption by approximately 60%
Source: Panqi Micro
The Panqi Micro 2.4G Bluetooth product line mainly targets the consumer market, while the ChirpIoT series product line is mainly used in industrial scenarios. When discussing the reasons for expanding from consumption to the industrial sector, Yang Yueming sees it this way:
Although the consumer market is large in scale, there is fierce competition among many players, which leads to low Gross margin of the consumer market. In addition, the consumer market is prone to significant fluctuations in company revenue due to rapid product updates and strong periodicity. In order to maintain the long-term sustainable and stable development of the company, around 2016, the company began to expand into the Industrial internet of things field with higher Gross margin and more stable prices by taking advantage of the opportunity of industrial intelligence upgrading. At present, the company has made certain achievements in industrial transmission fields such as low-power, long-distance meters.
Looking ahead, Yang Yueming stated that although there are many wireless communication chips in the domestic market, there are not many companies that can achieve a real revenue scale of over 1 billion yuan. This is the opportunity for domestic chip design companies. In the future, Pioneer will also focus on the Industrial internet of things market, constantly improve the product matrix, and constantly update and iterate our products with Pioneer‘s technical advantages of high performance, long distance and low power consumption, so as to further expand and strengthen the company while meeting the specific customer needs of different segments of the industry.
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