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Spreadtrum

The International ARM Race: Rise Of The Chinese SoC
By , Dorian Black

Spreadtrum Communications Inc. is a Shanghai-based fabless chip maker and the world's 17th largest semiconductor company. It is best known for making chipsets for the Chinese TD-SCDMA 3G network, but it also sells chips to customers from other countries. The company was acquired last year by Tsinghua Unigroup, a Chinese consumer electronics firm.

Back in 2011, Spreadtrum managed to win 25 percent of the 2G phone market in China, mainly from MediaTek, which introduced a weaker chip at the time and, in turn, gave Spreadtrum the opportunity to grow its market share rapidly.

Today, Spreadtrum is known mainly for making chipsets that work on China’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, which covers 50 percent of the customers there. But it's also making chips for other customers in other countries. If you’re looking at the overall Chinese smartphone market, Spreadtrum only has 11 percent share.

SC6821

While we generally think of companies like MediaTek as offering entry-level hardware, Spreadtrum goes even lower. Earlier this year, we learned that Spreadtrum and Mozilla are partnering to offer a $25 Firefox OS smartphone, which is way below the retail price of any phone we've tested on Tom’s Hardware.

This smartphone will come with a SC6821 chip. We don’t know too much about the platform, other than that it's based on ARM's Cortex-A5, has support for Wi-Fi (presumably 802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth, and integrates FM radio functionality. It also supports a camera (most likely up to 5 MP) and HVGA resolutions, will run Firefox OS, and will work on WCDMA and EDGE networks.

Mozilla most likely chose Spreadtrum due to its processor's low price. Therefore, performance and features probably weren’t the priority. At least Mozilla picked an ARMv7-capable chip, as it prepares to completely drop ARMv6 support from both Firefox OS and the mobile Firefox app for Android. The sooner everyone gets rid of ARMv6, the sooner developers can focus on supporting ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures.

SC7735S

Mozilla is not the only big-name customer serviced by Spreadtrum. HTC has also put the Spreadtrum Quak (SC7735S) chip inside its Desire 700 mid-range smartphone. This chip is based on a quad-core Cortex-A7 1.2 GHz CPU and Mali-400 GPU. It supports up to 2 GB of RAM, 1080p video playback at 30 FPS, VP8 hardware decoding, and up to 13 MP cameras.

HTC hasn't had the best luck with its low-end smartphone offerings because, for some reason, it always ends up more expensive than the competition sporting similar specs. Spreadtrum might help HTC reduce its overall prices for its low-end smartphones.

Earlier this year, there were some talks about a potential Spreadtrum/RDA Microelectronics merger, but this deal was met with opposition from RDA employees, who consider Spreadtrum a much less nimble company than their own.

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Top Comments
  • 19 Hide
    SWEETMUSK , August 28, 2014 11:14 AM
    Please stop saying that Taiwan is equal to China . We are different , yes maybe Taiwanese's Ancestor are the same from china but now we are different!! just like England and America before . we speak same language but doesn't mean we are the same. is Canda and America are the same country ? because they both speak english?NO they are not the same! Taiwanese got a lot different Politics,Community and Traditional compare to the China please put 2 flag on which one is Taiwan and which one is China Thank you
Other Comments
  • 1 Hide
    blackmagnum , August 28, 2014 12:37 AM
    God bless, America. If you can't beat them, join them!
  • 0 Hide
    jossrik , August 28, 2014 12:52 AM
    It'll be interesting to see where manufacturing goes in the future, maybe back to EU or even Africa somewhere maybe. Right now it's hard to see things get cheaper than China, but of course, eventually it will happen. I hear Apple is gonna buy China.
  • 1 Hide
    jjjjkkkk , August 28, 2014 12:54 AM
    MediaTek is Taiwanese not Chinese
    remove it from the list
  • 0 Hide
    Draven35 , August 28, 2014 1:13 AM
    Quote:
    The company's first commercial foray using this technology came in 1983 with the 16-bit Acorn RISC Machine, or ARM. It ran one of the first true multitasking operating systems in production, RISC OS,


    Except, the first silicon didn't exist until 1985, and the machine running RISC OS didn't exist until 1987.
  • 0 Hide
    blubbey , August 28, 2014 2:23 AM
    Quote:
    God bless, America. If you can't beat them, join them!


    ARM are British though..... (unless I'm missing something which is entirely possible).
  • -3 Hide
    virtualban , August 28, 2014 4:30 AM
    The Chinese may leech off and profit from current available designs, and close-source their 'innovations', but I wonder what will they do when the rest of the world will reverse engineer and use any progress they make without having to answer to the Chinese companies (duh).
  • 1 Hide
    icemunk , August 28, 2014 4:37 AM
    The writer seems to think the RK3288 is a 2015 SOC, however it has been out since April, and many devices are available with it, lots of $200 tablets with 2000X1500 resolution, and a bunch of TV boxes as well for $100. It's an excellent chip, achieving around 40,000 antutu scores. 2015 I'm sure we'll see a brand-new Rockchip, but the RK3288 has been out for some time.
  • -2 Hide
    Andy Chow , August 28, 2014 4:53 AM
    Quote:
    MediaTek is Taiwanese not Chinese
    remove it from the list


    Since when is Taiwanese not Chinese? Read a book.
  • 6 Hide
    oxiide , August 28, 2014 5:48 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    MediaTek is Taiwanese not Chinese
    remove it from the list


    Since when is Taiwanese not Chinese? Read a book.

    Hopefully your books mention that the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (mainland China) are two distinct and, for the most part, recognized nations.

    MediaTek is indeed a Taiwanese company, though I'd rather they just specify that in the article rather than being told to remove it over a technicality. It's still relevant to the topic regardless of where they are headquartered.
  • 1 Hide
    amk-aka-Phantom , August 28, 2014 6:07 AM
    Thanks to the author for pointing out the closed-source BS, this makes me hate Mediatek. Others are irrelevant (luckily) so far, don't see their chips in any reasonable devices.
  • -3 Hide
    Au_equus , August 28, 2014 6:32 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Quote:
    MediaTek is Taiwanese not Chinese
    remove it from the list


    Since when is Taiwanese not Chinese? Read a book.

    Hopefully your books mention that the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (mainland China) are two distinct and, for the most part, recognized nations.

    MediaTek is indeed a Taiwanese company, though I'd rather they just specify that in the article rather than being told to remove it over a technicality. It's still relevant to the topic regardless of where they are headquartered.

    ... as recognized by the US and said partners, but not by the United Nations.
  • 0 Hide
    mliska1 , August 28, 2014 7:15 AM
    I've got a RK3066 in one of those $100 MINIX boxes that are on Newegg. It's pretty powerful for what I need and the MINIX box has been rock solid. It is running on Android 4.0 though and I can't find a way to upgrade it.
  • 1 Hide
    Avus , August 28, 2014 8:45 AM
    If people can jailbreak a closed source OS like iOS, I am sure people can do the same with these garbage Chinese Android OS. If these garbage are popular enough, people will going to make them "open source".
  • 0 Hide
    calmlikeabomb , August 28, 2014 10:58 AM
    you are talking like Googles' is "true" to the open source way of thought.
  • 19 Hide
    SWEETMUSK , August 28, 2014 11:14 AM
    Please stop saying that Taiwan is equal to China . We are different , yes maybe Taiwanese's Ancestor are the same from china but now we are different!! just like England and America before . we speak same language but doesn't mean we are the same. is Canda and America are the same country ? because they both speak english?NO they are not the same! Taiwanese got a lot different Politics,Community and Traditional compare to the China please put 2 flag on which one is Taiwan and which one is China Thank you
  • 0 Hide
    Saga Lout , August 28, 2014 11:52 AM
    SWEETMUSK - please stop posting duplicates. Also, anyone else doing so for voting purposes could be banned from Tom's.
  • -1 Hide
    allenpan , August 28, 2014 3:41 PM
    where is WonderMedia Arm SoC? WonderMedia is part of VIA embedded for ARM solution

    http://www.wondermedia.com.tw/en/index.jsp

    http://www.viagallery.com/Products/wondermedia-wm8980-7-and-10-turnkey-tablet-solutions.aspx
  • 0 Hide
    Simi69 , August 28, 2014 4:36 PM
    This article exaggerates the performance of many of these SOC's and fails to mention the large volume of very low binned chips that should never have been released finding their way into cheap tablets. The rockchip 3188 is a prime example of this, constantly locking up if put under any real pressure. Which is a shame as the rockchip 3066 was an excellent chip.

    It also skips the most ubiquitous of the mediatek chips the mtk6582 which was released just before the mtk6592 as a replacement to the mtk6589, and is the Chinese (Taiwanese) chip most likely to be encountered in budget phones the west at the moment. I appreciate the effort of the article though, and with a bit of cleaning up could be a good reference for those wishing to delve into the world of Chinese smartphones.
  • 1 Hide
    ldo , August 28, 2014 7:42 PM
    Just a note that there is no issue of “spirit” as far as open-sourcing kernels goes. Android uses the Linux kernel, which is released under the GPL. That means that, if you redistribute it, you *must* offer the source. Otherwise you’re in violation of the licence.
  • -1 Hide
    andy5174 , August 28, 2014 9:25 PM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Quote:
    MediaTek is Taiwanese not Chinese
    remove it from the list


    Since when is Taiwanese not Chinese? Read a book.

    Hopefully your books mention that the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (mainland China) are two distinct and, for the most part, recognized nations.

    MediaTek is indeed a Taiwanese company, though I'd rather they just specify that in the article rather than being told to remove it over a technicality. It's still relevant to the topic regardless of where they are headquartered.

    ... as recognized by the US and said partners, but not by the United Nations.


    rofl! Peoples from all over the world know that Taiwan is an independent country including you Chinese. You Chinese just don't admit it! China's economy will become a joke when China is no longer the cheapest place for manufacturing. By then, no country will support your *OWNERSHIP claim of Taiwan politically. BTW, even now, no one but you Chinese support the stupid claim in non-political situations. Truth always hurts, PITA Chinese!
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