Chinese smartphone giants like Xiaomi and Vivo are entering the satellite communication technology arena. A Chinese industry insider claimed that Huawei maintains an exclusive hold on satellite communication solutions for smartphones has stirred controversy, resulting in other smartphone manufacturers having to bide their time before introducing their satellite communication features, Jiwei reported.

An insider at China Telecom affirmed that this technology is not exclusively held by Huawei. However, achieving satellite communication on smartphones indeed poses certain technical challenges, crossing over the substantial R&D efforts to break through the bottlenecks on chip module miniaturization (including RF, Baseband Unit, etc), optimizing the TCP/IP protocol over satellite communication, and end user management.

Huawei Mate 60 Pro has emerged as a pioneer in satellite communication, offering support for satellite calling. Industry insiders have revealed that the satellite communication processor within Huawei Mate 60 Pro was specially crafted for Huawei by a research institute under the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC). Therefore, Huawei Mate 60 partnered with China Telecom to achieve “satellite calls” services via China’s domestic satellite “Tiantong”, which is currently operated by China Telecom.

Moreover, Qualcomm’s recent announcement about partnering with smartphone brands such as Motorola, OnePlus, Honor, OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, and others to develop smartphones with satellite communication feature indicates a broader interest in this technology.

Currently, the consumers tends to extend their device-replacement timelines since the upgrades on smartphone hardware stuck in the bottlenecks such as the performance improvements of processors and camera modules are limited, proven by TrendForce’s estimation that the YoY growth rate of the average DRAM content of smartphones will reach around 6.7% for 2023. This projection is a significant improvement compared with the YoY growth rate of 3.9% for 2022. However, TrendForce also forecasts that the YoY growth rate will stay under 10% in the next several years.

As for smartphone CIS, the shipments is projected to decrease from 4.46 billion units in 2022 to a more subdued 4.318 billion units in 2023. That translates to a YoY contraction of 3.2%.

Consequently, satellite communication is poised to become a key selling point, enticing consumers to upgrade their devices. The industry foresees satellite communication features extending beyond high-end smartphones, and becoming available across a wider range of models, with this shift expected to happen between 2024~2025.
(Image: Huawei)

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