Eric Zhou – SVP Marketing, UNISOC

Fabless semiconductor company UNISOC is gung ho about its growth potential in

India, especially post its successful association with Reliance Jiophone, which indeed has changed the market dynamics. It helped millions of Indian consumers using 2G technology leapfrogged onto the high-speed 4G connectivity. UNISOC, which happens to be the third-largest mobile chipset maker in the world, has some aggressive plans for India, from powering smartphones to be a prominent player in the global IOT solutions domain. What’s more, the company is making significant investments to achieve the pole position for the imminent 5G revolution. Eric Zhou, SVP of Marketing, UNISOC, shares more about the company and its vision, in an interaction with Ramesh Kumar Raja. Excerpts:

UNISOC has mostly been associated with affordable smartphones. How does it vie against rivals like Qualcomm and Mediatek? While UNISOC chipsets have powered many

affordable smartphones, we also have SOC solutions for mid-to-mid-premium range of phones. We have recently announced two new octa-core chipsets, TIGER T710 and TIGER T618, to further revolutionize the segment. We are also collaborating with top global brands in the fields of AI, IOT and machine learning to develop cutting-edge SOC solutions.

Our differentiation lies in our focus on enabling state-of-the-art technology at the most cost-effective price points. For instance, TIGER T710, which will begin shipping in early 2020, is the first chipset of its kind to have a dedicated Android Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with a heterogeneous dual-core architecture. This allows the solution to offer up to 12 times larger prediction errors, 30% improvement in flat interference, and 70% faster runtime when loading Ai-based

tasks. This unique approach of integrating affordability with innovation has allowed UNISOC to establish itself as among the world’s leading mobile chipset company.

How do you look at India as a market in comparison to the other countries where you operate in? India is an important strategic market for UNISOC. The country is the second-largest smartphone market in the world. More importantly, there has been a rapid upward migration in the preferences of its consumer base. Users who previously owned feature phones are now purchasing either 4G smart feature phones or entrylevel smartphones, while those who used budget smartphones are moving towards mid-range and premium smartphones.

This change in market trends was most prominently highlighted in the explosive reception to Jiophone which was powered by UNISOC chipsets. Given the sheer size of the country’s consumer base, this shift represents an extremely lucrative business opportunity for a chipset company.

Can you please tell us about your tie-ups with handset makers in India? We are working with most leading Indian brands and are

also in talks with several Chinese mobile phone manufacturers. In addition to players in the mobile industry, we are working with top vendors in the global IOT solutions domain. Our end goal is to make an interconnected, seamless, and secure Iot/ai-led ecosystem a tangible reality for Indian customers.

UNISOC’S association with Jiophone is said to be quite successful, especially in terms of revenue. Can you please elaborate about the same? Our association with Jiophone has been indeed quite fruitful. Not only did we capture a large segment of the burgeoning smart 4G feature phone market but also managed to further consolidate our leadership position in the 4G smart feature phone segment.

The innovation enabled by UNISOC chipset and Reliance Jiophone has changed the market dynamics. It helped millions of Indian consumers using 2G technology leapfrogged onto the highspeed 4G connectivity. For Jiophone, the collaboration was not only on hardware front but also on software part where we worked very closely with Reliance and KAIOS.

What is the growth that you are targeting in India and from where do you think this will come? As mentioned earlier also, we see a huge opportunity for business growth in India. This growth will be driven in equal parts by the mobile and IOT segments. In particular, we foresee a huge potential in the burgeoning IOT market. With Nasscom forecasting the IOT space to be worth $15 billion by next year, we expect the segment to become an important growth driver for our revenues and business in India.

We are also quite excited about the upcoming 5G rollout in India and have already invested heavily in technological R&D. We had announced MAKALU, our 5G technology platform, and our first 5G modem IVY510 at the MWC 2019 in Barcelona. Through such solutions, UNISOC aims to further accelerate the commercialization of 5G technology and provide consumers with access to latest technology. These developments also underline our commitment to popularising 5G adoption in India with innovative solutions.

5G is going to be the next big thing in the market following 4G, LTE, VOLTE. How prepared UNISOC is to cash in on the upcoming technology? We are making significant investments to achieve the pole position for the imminent 5G revolution. In addition to MAKALU and IVY510, we have also been collaborating with industry-leading players to test 5G applications. For instance, we recently completed the over-the-air (OTA) testing for millimetre-wave 5G chipset in collaboration with Rohde & Schwarz. The successful testing was conducted for broadband EIRP, beamforming, 5GNR EVM and other factors, with the test results as expected.

In cooperation with Huawei Technologies, we have also completed a round of indoor function interoperability test under the NSA network, based on 3GPP R15 f40, for IVY 510. During the test, which was organised by IMT-2020 (5G), the chipset reached a peak download speed of 1.38Gbps.these endeavours highlight UNISOC’S commitment to be ready for the upcoming 5G wave.

What’s your move towards Android 10, the next-generation OS? UNISOC has worked closely with Google to implement its next generation operating system, Android 10, on our smartphone mobile platforms.

By having an early access to Android 10, we optimized the software on TIGER SC9863A, SC9832E and SC7731E mobile platforms to ensure clients get to upgrade to Android 10 at the time of launch. The recently-launched BLU G8 powered by UNISOC TIGER SC9863A is based on Android 10, making it one of the first batch of manufacturers in the world to run Google’s latest operating system, bringing the latest technology and service experience to consumers. In fact, BLU launched the new smartphone immediately after Google released its commercial version of Android 10, highlighting the tremendous strength of both BLU and UNISOC in the system software field.

UNISOC has been authorized by Google to become a third-party certification laboratory, certifying GMS Express Plus devices with UNISOC chipsets, including pre-tested, pre-certified and fully compatible Android software, Google Mobile Service (GMS) and various Android test suites. As a GMS 3PL certifier, UNISOC will be able to significantly simplify the compatibility certification process, shorten its duration time for OEM and ODM customers, accelerate products’ launch and allow manufacturers and OEMS to bring the latest software enhancements to consumers more rapidly.

The IOT segment offers a huge opportunity for chipset-makers. How is UNISOC looking at it? The IOT market in India represents a high growth opportunity for UNISOC. We have a wide range of IOT solutions for automobiles, digital health, security, smart city, wearables, etc. UNISOC has been working with various IOT vendors to make an interconnected smart world – a tangible reality.

We have also recently received certification from Deutsche Telekom for IVY8908A, our NB-IOT cutting-edge chipset, which has been listed as a recommended solution by the service provider. These developments highlight the measures we are already taking towards nurturing an entire ecosystem of Iot-enabled devices and services.

The launch of TIGER T710, which is a high-performance Ai-enabled edge computing smartphone platform, is aimed at capitalising on this future demand for IOT solutions, devices, and services. ■

ramesh@mymobile.co.in