UNISOC

UNISOC

Native name	紫光展锐
Industry	Semiconductors
Predecessor	Spreadtrum
Founded	April 2001
Headquarters	Shanghai, China
Key people	MaDaojie (Chairman) RenQiwei (CEO)
Products	Central processing units Chipsets Microprocessors Systems-on-chip (SoCs)
Number of employees	5,500+[1]
Parent	Tsinghua Unigroup
Website	www.unisoc.com/en_us/

UNISOC (Chinese: 紫光展锐; pinyin: Zǐguāng zhǎn ruì), formerly Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. (Chinese: 展讯通信有限公司; pinyin: Zhǎnxùn Tōngxìn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Shanghai which produces chipsets for mobile phones. UNISOC develops its business in two major fields - consumer electronics and industrial electronics. Consumer electronics includes smartphones, feature phones, smart audio systems, smart wearables and other related devices. Industrial electronics cover fields such as LAN IoT, WAN IoT and smart displays.^[1]

From 2021, it has been the fourth largest mobile processor manufacturer in the world, after MediaTek, Qualcomm and Apple, with 9% of global market share.^[2]

Background

In 2021, Tsinghua Unigroup, UNISOC's former parent company, was on the verge of bankruptcy. After a year-long restructuring, a private equity consortium headed by Chinese government-backed Wise Road Capital took over in 2022 and now controls the company.^[3][4] In addition to Wise Road, the company’s shareholders include the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, a Chinese government-backed investment fund for chips, which has a 13% stake in the company.^[5]

Research and development

UNISOC products support a broad range of wireless communications standards, including GSM, GPRS, EDGE, TD-SCDMA, W-CDMA, HSPA+ and TD-LTE. UNISOC has a global R & D layout, with more than 5,000 employees worldwide, 90% of whom are R&D personnel.

The company originally produced chips for GSM handsets, but most of its resources in the late 2000s were then focused on the Chinese TD-SCDMA 3G standard. In addition to GSM and combined GSM/TD-SCDMA baseband chipsets, they also supplied chips for two Chinese mobile TV standards: TD-MBMS and CMMB. UNISOC (then known as Spreadtrum)'s customers accounted for 50% of TD-SCDMA handset sales in China Mobile's round of TD-SCDMA trials in 2008.^[6]

UNISOC, then still known as Spreadtrum, was formerly a public company listed on NASDAQ, but agreed to an acquisition by Tsinghua Holdings subsidiary Tsinghua Unigroup, in July 2013, for about US$1.78 billion;^[7] the deal completed on 23 December 2013.^[8]

In 2014, Tsinghua Unigroup acquired RDA Microelectronics for US$907 Million.^[9] RDA Microelectronics was a fabless semiconductor company that designed, developed and marketed wireless system-on-chip and radio-frequency semiconductors for cellular, connectivity and broadcast applications.

In 2018, the company Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics was merged and rebranded to UNISOC, in which Intel agreed to invest $1.5 billion for a 20 percent stake. The company also began working on a 5G smartphone platform with an Intel 5G modem.^[10][11] In February 2018, UNISOC introduced high-end smartphone SOCs with augmented reality capabilities.^[12]

UNISOC released the 5G technology platform Makalu 1.0 and the V510 5G baseband chip in February 2019. A year later, they launched the UNISOC T7520, a 5G SoC that uses of 6nm EUV advanced process technology.^[13]

In 2021, it beat HiSilicon and ranked third in the Chinese smartphone AP market share.^[14]

Main products

Main article: List of UNISOC processors

Currently, UNISOC’s main products include mobile system-on-chips, baseband chips, AI chips, radio frequency chips, and other communication, computing, and control chips, which are widely used in consumer electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smart wearables.

See also

• Semiconductor industry
• Semiconductor industry in China

• Allwinner
• Intel Atom
• HiSilicon
• Freescale i.MX
• Leadcore Technology
• MediaTek
• MStar Semiconductors
• Nufront
• Rockchip
• Qualcomm Snapdragon
• Nvidia Tegra
• Broadcom VideoCore

References

1. "About us". Unisoc. Retrieved July 1, 2024.
2. "China's Tsinghua Unigroup axes major memory chip projects". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved July 1, 2024.
3. Wu, Kane; Horwitz, Josh; Liu, Roxanne (2023-02-14). "Exclusive: Chinese chip designer Unisoc seeks to raise $1.5 bln in private funding -sources". Reuters. Retrieved 2023-10-15.
4. "Tsinghua Unigroup names new chairman for its mobile chip design subsidiary". South China Morning Post. 2023-06-27. Retrieved 2023-10-15.
5. "UPDATE 1-China's chip conglomerate Unigroup gets state-backed investors, Alibaba out of deal". Reuters. 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2023-10-15.
6. Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. Announces First Quarter 2008 Results (FindArticles via PR Newswire), 15 May 2008, retrieved 26 June 2008
7. Chaudhuri, Saabira (12 July 2013). "Spreadtrum Communications Agrees to $1.78 Billion Takeover". Wall Street Journal. wsj.com. Retrieved 2014-01-11.
8. "Tsinghua Unigroup Completes Acquisition of Spreadtrum for US$31.00 per ADS". www.broadwayworld.com. Archived from the original on 2014-01-11. Retrieved 2014-01-11.
9. "Tsinghua Unigroup Closes US$907 Million Acquisition of RDA Microelectronics for US$18.50 Per ADS". GlobeNewswire News Room (Press release). RDA Microelectronics Inc. 2014-07-18. Retrieved 2019-05-04.
10. "Spreadtrum and RDA join Intel on 5G". 23 February 2018.
11. "Spreadtrum rebrands itself to Unisoc; to launch two new chipsets for low-cost phones - ET Telecom".
12. Hindustan Times
13. "5G module with China-made chip to be mass-produced in Q4". cntechpost.com. cnTechPost. 29 June 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
14. "Unisoc growing smartphone application processor market share in China".