Many manufacturers are competing to lay out the Wi-Fi 6 industry chain

Recently, manufacturers such as Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi have released Wi-Fi 6-related terminal products, covering mobile phones, TVs, routers and other fields. Institutions predict that the Wi-Fi 6 market size is expected to maintain high growth, and companies related to the industry chain will benefit.

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Industry chain companies will benefit

On March 11, MediaTek announced that it and Samsung have recently jointly launched the world's first 8K resolution QLED TV equipped with MediaTek's customized Wi-Fi 6 chip - Samsung 8K QLED Y20 (Q950, Q900). This is currently the only 8K TV in the world that supports Wi-Fi 6.

Wi-Fi6 is the latest generation of wireless LAN transmission technology. Compared with the previous generation of technology, it will provide faster speed, higher throughput, larger coverage area, better security and lower latency, bringing users a better and smoother experience.

In February, Xiaomi released the new Mi 10 series of mobile phones that support Wi-Fi 6 technology, and also launched its first Wi-Fi 6 router AX3600. Huawei released the Wi-Fi 6+ router AX3 series. Huawei said that it has submitted 240 technical proposals for Wi-Fi 6 and is a major contributor to the Wi-Fi 6 standard. Huawei's two end-to-end self-developed Wi-Fi 6+ chips will be used in Huawei routers, Huawei phones and other terminals.

On March 11, Zowee Technology said on an interactive platform that the company's main Wi-Fi 6 router cooperation customers include Xiaomi, Huawei and other brands. The Wi-Fi 6 routers produced by the company for its customers have performed well in the market, and the shipment volume of cooperative products in 2020 will hit a new historical peak.

Tianyi Co., Ltd. said on March 7 that the company achieved mass shipments of Wi-Fi 6 routers in the second half of 2019. It has currently launched two models of Wi-Fi 6 products to the market, and two other models of products have also entered the bidding process. In the future, it will launch more types of products depending on market demand for customers to make differentiated choices. At present, the company's Wi-Fi 6 product customers in China are China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom, and overseas customers are also being expanded.

In addition, Wanlong Optoelectronics said that its subsidiary Yingmai Communications is stepping up research and development, and is expected to launch products related to the Wi-Fi 6 standard in the first half of this year. Skyworth Digital said on February 17 that the company's Wi-Fi 6 router products are currently in the research and development stage. On January 22, Broadcom Integrated said on the interactive platform that the company's Wi-Fi 6 products are also in the process of continuous research and development, and the research and development progress is in line with expectations.

Huatai Securities said that looking forward to the future, Wi-Fi 6 will gain more commercial value in smart homes, dense commercial environments, and enterprise/factory operations, and companies related to the Wi-Fi 6 industry chain will benefit.

Expected to maintain high growth

The accelerated promotion of Wi-Fi 6 will directly benefit upstream Wi-Fi chip manufacturers, as well as midstream companies and network equipment vendors.

According to CICC Securities, the Wi-Fi 6 industry chain mainly involves chips, home routers/gateways, wireless access APs for indoor coverage, and various WiFi access terminals, among which chips are the foundation.

At present, the main Wi-Fi chip manufacturers are Qualcomm, Broadcom, Huawei, Espressif Systems, etc., the main home router/home smart gateway suppliers are TP-Link, Tenda, Xiaomi, ZTE, Huawei, Tianyi Co., Ltd., Ruiscomda, Mercedes-Benz Information, SDIC Information, Gongjin Co., Ltd., etc., and the main wireless access AP suppliers are Tsinghua Unigroup (H3C), StarNet Ruijie (Ruijie Networks), Huawei, ZTE, etc.

CITIC Securities predicts that the global shipments of chips that meet the Wi-Fi 6 standard will grow rapidly from about 300 million sets this year to more than 2 billion sets in 2022, and the market size will greatly exceed the shipment scale of 5G baseband chips. "Wi-Fi 6 is ready to go." CITIC Securities believes that 2019 is the first year of Wi-Fi 6, and the accelerated development of Wi-Fi 6 in 2020 will lay a solid foundation for the next round of traffic explosion together with 5G.

CICC Securities also believes that 2020 may be the beginning of a rapid increase in Wi-Fi 6 penetration, and the total shipments of devices supporting WiFi 6 will increase from 116,000 units in 2019 to 58 million units in 2021.

Essence Securities stated that benefiting from the trends of VR/AR, IoT, online education and smart home, the Wi-Fi6 market has broad space and is expected to maintain high growth in the next few years.