Exclusive Interview: iSuppli Gu Wenjun Talks about the Opportunities and Challenges of Tablet PCs for Semiconductor Manufacturers

Based on the unusually explosive market for tablet PCs, China Power recently plans to introduce a tablet computer theme. With semiconductor chips as the core, it will gather the complete market and technical information from the complete machine and solution to the chip. It hopes to provide the research and development engineers for tablet PC systems from Information to plan procurement services. To this end, we interviewed Gu Wenjun, a senior analyst at iSuppli, an internationally renowned market consulting company, to see how he analyzed the market and technology trends of tablet PCs.

ECCN: What do you think about the development trend of the tablet PC market in recent years? What are the main reasons for the development of blowout in this market?

Gu Wenjun: Tablet PC market will grow rapidly in recent years and become a new killer product, which will also bring huge business opportunities for electronic products. The main reason lies in A: The general trend: The application carrier in the era of mobile Internet has now entered the era of mobile Internet, and more and more innovative applications are emerging in an endless stream. It can be said that the business model, technology, industry chain, and the entire mobile Internet development model are relatively mature. Therefore, there is a need for so many visual line carriers in innovative applications. The mobile phones and PCs have their own defects (the mobile phone is not as good as a tablet computer, and the mobile portability PC is inferior to a tablet computer), so the tablet computer should emerge.

B: Perfect positioning. The market has been trying to find a product to locate between a mobile phone (below 3 inches) and a PC. MP3, PMP, MP5, netbooks, and even e-books have all been tried, but the tablet still relies on the above functional orientation. And product positioning (size, etc. fills this market.

C: The maturity of the ecosystem. Such as the wireless Internet network, the maturity of chip technology, business model improvement and so on.

D: The release of the Apple iPad ignited the fire.

ECCN: What are the future trends in the functionality and price of tablet PCs?

Gu Wenjun: Now the function is mainly focused on entertainment. In the future, it will continue to improve in the direction of office and interaction. The price will definitely continue to decline. The market will form a "dumbbell" structure: Apple occupies the high end, many cottage companies occupy the following, and the middle brand market will be small.

ECCN: What opportunities and challenges does the tablet market bring to semiconductor manufacturers?

Gu Wenjun: This is a big market for semiconductor manufacturers. Whether it's an application processor (AP) or power management, panel driver, CPU, graphics display, etc., is a great opportunity. The challenges lie in high integration, low power consumption, small area, and so on.

ECCN: There are dozens of tablet computer core processor solution providers. They are all based on different architectures. Can you analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each architecture and solution?

Gu Wenjun: At present, the ARM architecture is the most, X86 and MIPS are also available, but the ARM architecture is the most. However, for ARM customers, how to differentiate this is a problem.

ECCN: Can you analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various tablet operating systems and which one will become mainstream?

Gu Wenjun: Android will become the mainstream.

ECCN: In your opinion, what are the development opportunities in the Chinese market for IDHs and manufacturers in China compared to international manufacturers?

Gu Wenjun: The advantage lies in quick response, closeness to the market and consumers, relatively perfect supply chain, and development opportunities for segmented markets and low-end markets.

ECCN: Do you think that the cottage model is suitable for the tablet market? What should be the future business model for tablets?

Gu Wenjun: Applicable. The business model is the dumbbell structure mentioned above. For Apple, it is still a platform to sell services, relying on a huge fan base and application developer resources to obtain the greatest benefits; and for many cottage manufacturers, the first stage is still selling products, and arrive at a certain extent After the volume, there will be some applications that are bundled with the product to sell and add some value-added services. Both of these will be the mainstream business model in the future.