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Huawei's folding screen has increased, and liquid metal has gained momentum
Alpha Workshop Research Institute
08-12 07:30
Huawei's folding screen mobile phone has achieved heavy volume, the key product material of liquid metal has entered the industrialization, and the liquid metal has entered the industrialization, and new outlets are gaining momentum.
Before Huawei CBG President Yu Chengdong revealed the "zirconium-based liquid metal", the liquid metal stayed in the imagination for a long time. It was the T-1000 in "Terminator". From the molten mercury object, it slowly condensed into an explosive surface. robot.
That is an imagination, not the future of real technology and industry. Nearly a hundred years after being discovered, due to the release of Huawei's mate x series mobile phones, China's liquid metal industrialization process has begun to accelerate, and it is expected to lead the world.
Because the melting point of liquid metal materials is much lower than that of stainless steel and other alloys, and their hardness and wear resistance are excellent, the industry has always expected this material to be widely used in smart devices, automobiles, and military industries including mobile phones. However, due to production capacity and technical thresholds, the scope of application has not been wide.
T-1000 is imaginative, but not the future reality of liquid metal
Prior to this, Apple was the first to apply liquid metal material to the SIM card needle, and some niche brands used it as a middle frame. So far, the hinge accessories of Huawei's mate series are the largest application case of liquid metal in the field of mobile phones.
With the gradual increase in volume of Huawei's folding screen mobile phones, the scale of the liquid metal industry chain is gradually increasing, and it is also attracting the attention of the capital market. Recently, "Zhiwu" learned that Changzhou Shijing, a liquid metal company based in Jiangsu, has just received a financing from Lenovo Investment and its founder Xu Shizhong, whose valuation is close to 2 billion.
Changzhou Shijing is also one of the suppliers of Huawei's mate x series of "zirconium-based liquid metal" hinge products.
01 From Apple to Huawei, liquid metal technology originated well
In promoting the commercial use of liquid metal, Apple was the first to invest. On August 5, 2010, it announced to the world that it would buy out the permanent and global use right of Liquid Metal's amorphous alloy (liquid metal) products in the consumer electronics field. Overnight, Liquid metal stocks soared by 85%, and liquid metal materials attracted the attention of the world.
Because of the properties of both metal and glass, liquid metal has extremely high strength, hardness, and high-finish texture. It is both beautiful and strong, and is consistent with the delicate and durable iPhone positioning. Therefore, around 2006, Apple began research and development of related technologies. . Established in 1983, Liquid Metal was the only company in the world with the most comprehensive and core intellectual property rights related to bulk amorphous metals. It was also the first to successfully apply liquid metal to the commercial field, and it was first seen by Apple.
At that time, Apple deliberately wanted to use liquid metal to make the iPhone case. It not only tried the design of the liquid metal middle frame and the research and development of the mold, but also established a team with Foxconn to produce dozens of samples of the middle frame, but finally gave up due to the high cost of the manufacturing process.
After making a compromise, Apple later only used this new material to make the iPhone's card pick-up needle, but the impact of its actions was deeply imprinted in the industry. It draws liquid metal to people's eyes at once, attracting capital and new players influx.
The unique characteristics of liquid metal, suitable for the development of smart wear
The formation of the domestic industrial chain can be attributed to this. A large number of players, such as Pamti Haoyu, Yi'an Technology, and Changzhou Shijing, are mostly related to Apple's Foxconn project.
Not long after Apple entered the market, Huawei also established the 2012 Lab. The purpose is to select the world’s top talents and technology projects and cultivate the most promising advanced technologies in AI, software, communications, materials and other fields. Liquid metal is one of them. Small branch.
Huawei has done a 28-day salt spray test and found that liquid metal is the only substance that has not been oxidized. This feature prompted it to choose it among thousands of materials. Huawei believes that liquid metal will be the best material choice for commercial use, and has continued to carry out research and development for many years. Therefore, when designing the hinges of the Mate X series of mobile phones, liquid metal materials can be properly applied.
The charm of liquid metal materials is great. For more than ten years of development, Apple has never given up on its technology accumulation despite no more commercial actions, and Foxconn still retains a liquid metal project research team. Nowadays, from Apple to Huawei, liquid metal parts have also moved from card needles to hinges, and there has been a qualitative change.
Different from the previous small parts such as the card picking needle and the support parts of the camera, the overall design of the zirconium-based liquid metal hinge is quite complex and larger in shape, which has raised the technology and production level of liquid metal parts. The industry generally believes that, similar to the appearance of the first-generation iPhone in 2007, although the technology is not mature enough and the shipment performance is not ideal, the 5G folding screen mobile phone has epoch-making product significance due to its innovative design in technology and products , Which can boost the liquid metal industry in terms of shipments.
The zirconium-based liquid metal hinge developed by Huawei has brought hope to the liquid metal industry.
02 High volume of folding screen, turning point of liquid metal application
However, the difficulty of forming liquid metal materials, high technical thresholds, low production capacity and high costs have brought too many obstacles to its commercialization. Looking back at history, it is not surprising that Apple and Foxconn have not succeeded in research and development.
Even today, due to the high threshold of liquid metal hinge design technology, there are not many real players in the folding screen mobile phone industry. Only Huawei and Samsung are in the front, and other manufacturers have not kept up. Affected by the production capacity of liquid metal, the mass production of Huawei's folding screen mobile phones has been a headache since the launch of one year.
Prior to the promotion of folding screen mobile phones, Yu Chengdong mentioned that the key technologies of folding screen mobile phones are flexible screens and hinges, and mass production also depends on these two parts.
However, the optimistic attitude of mobile phone manufacturers towards this market has not changed. Lenovo and Xiaomi are all intensively developing folding screen mobile phones.
IHS Markit also gave data forecasts, saying that the shipments of foldable mobile phones this year and next year are expected to be 8.3 million and 17.5 million, respectively. By 2025, shipments will climb to 53.4 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 81%. The rate is about 3.4%. Its data performance is somewhat similar to the trend of iPhone shipments that year.
The hundreds of thousands of sales of mate xs so far may lead to a turning point in the liquid metal industry
In particular, Huawei recently adjusted the out-of-stock status of major platforms Mate Xs to on-sales, and revealed that it will release the inward-folding and more mature product Mate X2, and will release outward-folding products in the next few months, all hinting It has been proficient in the control of hinge design technology.
Recently, Google also said to the outside world that it will launch the folding screen mobile phone Passport and other news in 2021. It is not difficult to guess the production problem or it has been solved from the technical level.
Judging from the actions of mobile phone manufacturers, the organization's predictions, and the actions of liquid metal suppliers themselves, it has become a fact that there is a high probability that a large number of folding screen mobile phones will be used. As Huawei's liquid metal parts suppliers, Yi'an Technology and Changzhou Shijing, etc., cover most of the entire industry. As a result, the volume of folding screen mobile phones for the liquid metal industry not only means hope, but also has a more practical impact, especially the increase in revenue.
It has always been a common situation in the liquid metal industry to not make money. Since its development, Liquid Metal’s book revenue is not good at all, and year-round losses have become a normal phenomenon in the liquid metal industry.
Recently, Changzhou Shijing not only has just received financing, but its CEO Xu Shizhong also announced that from August 1st, it will lease the 600 square meter factory building of another company, Carbon Yuan Technology, to Shijinglai, all actively suggesting the growth of the demand market.
Yian Technology has also recently brought in Sanxiang Zirconium Magnesium and injected 100 million yuan into Ningde Sanxiang, and promised to provide it with all technical support for amorphous alloys (liquid metal), authorization to use all related technologies, and sales of equipment. The trend of expanding production capacity.
It can be said that the actions of the two of them have basically implemented Huawei’s speculation on the high volume of folding screen phones, and also hinted that the entire industry will gradually improve in terms of revenue due to the increase in product shipments, otherwise the capital and new players will not Will enter.
The liquid metal industry has entered a turning point in history.
03 Problems of Liquid Metal Industrialization
It is a fact that the liquid metal industry has not developed, and that the enthusiasm of various manufacturers has not diminished.
In the past, "losers" are not uncommon on the way to explore the commercial use of liquid metal. In the early years, it was reported that BYD was developing liquid golden millet batteries, but it was not known how it was later. Now it has already gone far in the commercialization of lithium iron phosphate batteries. In 2015, Apple obtained two new patents in the field of liquid metal, which once brought hope to the industry, but in the end it was nothing.
Behind their inability to drive the development of liquid metal, the key is that the technology and manufacturing process of the liquid metal industry are not mature enough.
Judging from the 60% yield data released by Changzhou Shijing, the current technology of manufacturers in material research and development, equipment development and process optimization is still somewhat insufficient. Some people in the industry have also pointed out that the liquid metal preparation process and equipment quantification methods are not perfect, and the lack of supporting resources will greatly restrict the industrialization and large-scale application of liquid metal.
It can be seen from the technical patent directions of various companies in the past two years that they actually have this concern. Among the approximately 30 patents applied by Changzhou Shijingsheng, apart from product design patents, other patents are focused on the improvement of process and material technology. Among them, the number of patents used to reduce costs, speed up production and increase yield accounts for By one-fifth. The patents applied by Yian Technology in the past two years are more focused on equipment design and research and development, but the purpose is also obvious, focusing on increasing the production capacity of a single device.
But enthusiastic manufacturers are not only head players such as Apple and Huawei. Turing Robotic Industries, the earliest mobile phone made of liquid metal shells, is the Turing mobile phone that everyone loves, and the Asus Zenphone 6 released last year. , Also made a similar design.
In 2020, Black Shark released ROG Moba 4 Plus, which uses liquid metal materials in the new field of heat dissipation layer.
Including the Tesla Model X liquid metal locks supplied by Yian Technology, sporting goods such as golf heads, tennis rackets, armor-piercing bullet cores, and the application of bone nails and other medical products, manufacturers of all sizes are making various attempts. The agglomeration effect promotes the continuous expansion of the imagination of liquid metal, and also gives the industry more opportunities for trial and error and development.
In particular, as the leading manufacturer of the electric vehicle market, Tesla’s global sales in the first half of this year have reached 179,000 vehicles, which is the sum of the sales of Renault-Nissan, Volkswagen and BYD. The strong growth will undoubtedly Increase the order volume of liquid metal door button business.
Originated from abroad, and highly sought after by Huawei, BYD and Foxconn, the liquid metal industry has developed the most complete industrial chain ecology in China, including the veteran Yian Technology, Changzhou Shijing and Pamdihao, both established in 2014 Yu, and Shanghai Chisheng established in 2016.
At present, they also have their own focus on technology research and development and product directions. For example, Changzhou World is biased towards medical applications and consumer electronics, Yi'an Technology focuses on equipment research and development, and Shanghai Chisheng focuses more on zero in consumer electronics applications. Component development. As a whole, a collaborative industrial ecology has also been formed.
The development of liquid metal is unique. It only took more than eighty years from its first discovery to the beginning of real-scale commercial use. Its popularity is extremely high and its development pace is extremely fast. Nowadays, with the increase in the number of folding screen mobile phones, the stage for market applications has basically been set up. It only depends on how the major players find their own "roles" in competition and collaboration. (Source: Zhiwu Technology Review)
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