The world’s No. 1 CIS chip!Gekewei officially landed on the Sci-tech Innovation Board

Recently, the latest data released by Yole Development, a semiconductor market trend research company, shows that the demand for CMOS image sensors will continue to be strong. The CMOS image sensor (CIS) track has also attracted many companies to deploy one after another.

On August 18, another leading domestic CIS company successfully landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board! The industry’s leading CMOS image sensor and Display driver chip supplier Gekewei Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Gekewei”) was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The first day of listing rose by 185.12% to 41 yuan. , Finally closed up by 145.13% to 35.25 yuan, with a turnover of 4.097 billion yuan throughout the day, a turnover rate of 70.37%, and a market value of 88.086 billion yuan.

OFweek Electronic engineering network learned that Gekewei was established in 2003. Its founder Zhao Lixin graduated from the Department of Radio of Tsinghua University in 1990, and then worked as an assistant researcher and studied for a master’s degree. Since then, he has been working in the semiconductor industry. From 1995 to 2003, several companies in the United States and New Zealand were transferred. In September 2003, Gekewei was established and started his own business. Today, Gekewei has become a leading domestic and internationally renowned image sensor and display driver chip design company.

Gekewei currently mainly provides QVGA (80,000 pixels) to 13 million pixels CMOS image sensors and LCD driver chips with resolutions between QQVGA and FHD. Its products are mainly used in the field of mobile phones and are widely used in tablet computers. , Notebook computers, wearable devices, mobile payments, automotive electronics, and other consumer electronics and industrial applications.

Globally, Gekewei has formed long-term and stable cooperative relations with many industry-leading camera and display module manufacturers such as Sunny Optics, Oufeiguang, Lijing, Shengtai Optics, Lianchuang Electronics, MCNEX, and China Optoelectronics, with a wide range of products It is applied to many mainstream terminal brand products such as Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and Transsion.

With an annual profit of 800 million, Gekewei ranks first in the world in CIS chip shipments in 2020

According to public information, the operating income of Gekewei from 2018 to 2020 was 2.193 billion yuan, 3.690 billion yuan, and 6.456 billion yuan, with an average annual compound growth rate of 71.56%; net profit was 5.5. RMB 0 billion, RMB 359 million, and RMB 773 million. From 2018 to 2020, the company’s comprehensive gross profit margin was 22.88%, 26.05% and 28.48%, respectively, and profitability continued to improve.

Specifically, the revenue of CMOS image sensor products from 2018 to 2020 will be 1.756 billion yuan, 3.194 billion yuan, and 5.864 billion yuan, accounting for 80%, 87% and 91% of the company’s main business revenue. As the company’s main source of income, the proportion of revenue increased from 80% to 90%. Combined with the current hot smartphone market, as smartphones are rapidly updated, the performance and functions of mobile phone cameras are continuously upgraded and innovated. The upgrade of the overall configuration specifications of mobile phone cameras has brought about an increase in the demand for CMOS image sensors, and also gave mobile phones COMS chips. Manufacturers bring significant benefits.

According to data from Frost & Sullivan, according to the statistics of the shipment volume, Geke Micro will realize the shipment of 2.04 billion CMOS image sensors in 2020, occupying 29.7% of the global market share and ranking first in the industry. Statistics by sales volume In 2020, the company’s CMOS image sensor sales revenue will reach 5.86 billion yuan, ranking fourth in the world.

In terms of display driver chips, according to Frost & Sullivan data, in 2019, Gekewei ranked second among suppliers in the Chinese market with 420 million LCD driver chip shipments, accounting for 9. 6%. Among the top five suppliers in the Chinese market, four are from Taiwan, and the issuer is the only mainland Chinese company, breaking the monopoly of Taiwanese companies in this market. Obviously, in the competition in the same industry, Gekewei is already in a relatively advantageous position in terms of the number of shipments.

The core technology is leading, but the high-end field is blank

Gekewei stated that as of December 31, 2020, the company had formed 309 domestic patents and 14 overseas patents through original acquisition, and built a series of products with strong market competitive advantages on this basis.

In terms of process research and development, compared with other participants in the market, Geke Micro’s products can be produced with a smaller number of mask layers, and optimized Pixel process innovation, which greatly reduces costs while ensuring product performance. In addition, the company has created unique solutions such as COM packaging technology and COF-Like innovative design that are different from the mainstream of the industry. Under the premise of ensuring product performance, the company has greatly improved the production yield and process difficulty.

In terms of circuit design, Gekewei adopts a low-cost three-layer metal design, and has effectively reduced the size of the chip through continuous optimization of product design, achieving more lean cost control than other products of the same performance.

As mentioned above, Geke Micro’s CIS chip has a comparative advantage in terms of the number of shipments. Why is it mentioned here that it is a relative advantage? OFweek Electronic Engineering Network noted that the company’s published prospectus showed that CMOS image sensor technology mainly has high pixels, high frame rate, and high imaging effects (such as high signal-to-noise ratio, low illumination and dynamic environment perception, etc.). The development direction, the total number of pixels is the most critical factor determining the imaging quality of CMOS image sensors, and is the core index of CMOS image sensor performance; under the premise of the same total number of pixels, other parameters have an important impact on the final imaging effect of the product.

At present, in terms of high pixels, the current mainstream smart phone CMOS image sensor pixels on the market are about 2 to 64 million pixels, and the number of security and automotive CMOS image sensors is about 2 million pixels or less. Some international manufacturers have already launched A 108 million pixel CMOS image sensor for smart phones. The most advantageous CMOS image sensor products of Gekewei are basically in the pixel range of 13 million and below. From the table below, you can also see the pixel range and application areas that Gekewei and its main competitors can cover with CMOS image sensors. :

Obviously, in the field of CMOS image sensors for mobile phones, Geke Micro has a maximum number of 16 million pixels, while Sony Samsung’s technology has reached 108 million pixels; in the field of other applications of CMOS image sensors, Sony can even provide products with up to 150 million pixels. . This also reflects that Gekewei’s product line is only part of the range (mainly 2 million, 5 million, 8 million, and 13 million pixels) represented by products that have unique advantages in terms of production cost, yield, and efficiency, but In the field of high-end image transmission, there is currently no corresponding market sales layout.

If the statistics are based on shipments, the top five suppliers in terms of market share in 2020 accounted for 96.0% of the market share. Among them, Gekewei ranked first in the market with a shipment of 2.04 billion units, occupying 29.7% of the market share. From this point of view, it is not an exaggeration to call Gekewei the CIS leader.

According to the sales caliber, Gekewei’s sales of 5.86 billion yuan in 2020 ranks fourth in the industry, but its market share is only 4.7%, and it seems that it has not reached the so-called “leading”. Standards.

It can be seen that with the growth of the smart phone market, the CMOS image sensor market has shown a good development trend under the dual promotion of the multi-camera trend and the trend of improving camera performance. Among them, the market size of less than 2 million pixels is decreasing year by year, and the market size of the two-megapixel and 5-13 million pixel ranges has remained stable after 2019, and the rise and fall are not obvious, while the high-end range of 1300-4800 Megapixels and 48 million pixels and above have maintained a relatively obvious growth trend. This means that if Gekewei cannot make a breakthrough in the high-end CMOS image sensor market in the future, but only maintains the current main product line (2 million, 5 million, 8 million and 13 million pixels), it may lose high-end CMOS in the future. Huge market opportunities for image sensors.

At present, smart phones are the main application areas of CMOS image sensors, including tablet computers, notebook computers and other consumer electronics products, as well as automotive electronics, security electronics, and medical electronics. They are also important application areas. Since the first mobile phone with camera function came out in 2000, mobile phone cameras have undergone several technological changes, from single-camera to dual-camera to multi-camera. In addition to the increase in the number of cameras, there have also been double-cameras in the direction of technological development. Application cases of 3D cameras such as stereo imaging, structured light, ToF (Time of Flight), etc. On the whole, users’ demands for quality and diversification of smartphone shooting experience have prompted the continuous development of CMOS image sensors in the direction of higher performance.