UNISOC (), formerly Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. (), is a Chinese

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

headquartered in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

which produces chipsets for

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s. UNISOC develops its business in two major fields - consumer electronics and industrial electronics, including smart phones, feature phones, smart audio systems, smart wear and other application fields; Industrial electronics cover the fields such as LAN IoT, WAN IoT and smart display. As of 2021, it is the fourth largest mobile processor manufacturer in the world, after Mediatek, Qualcomm and Apple, with 9% of global market share.

Research and development

UNISOC has research centres in Shanghai,

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

Suzhou Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade ...

Hangzhou Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whi ...

Chengdu Chengdu (, ; Simplified Chinese characters, simplified Chinese: 成都; pinyin: ''Chéngdū''; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively Romanization of Chi ...

Xiamen Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, ...

, United States, Finland and India, technical support centre in

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

, and international field support offices in South Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. Its products support a broad range of wireless communications standards, including GSM, GPRS, EDGE, TD-SCDMA, W-CDMA, HSPA+ and TD-LTE. UNISOC has a global R & D layout, with more than 5,000 employees worldwide, 90% of whom are R&D personnel. The company originally produced chips for

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

handsets, but most of its resources in the late 2000s were then focused on the Chinese

TD-SCDMA The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the Inte ...

3G standard. In addition to GSM and combined GSM/TD-SCDMA baseband chipsets, Spreadtrum also supplies chips for two Chinese mobile TV standards: TD-MBMS and

CMMB China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting (CMMB) is a mobile television and multimedia standard developed and specified in China by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT). It is based on the Satellite and Terrestrial Interacti ...

. Spreadtrum's customers accounted for 50% of TD-SCDMA handset sales in

China Mobile China Mobile is the trade name of both China Mobile Limited () and its ultimate controlling shareholder, China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd. (, formerly known as China Mobile Communications Corporation, "CMCC"), a Chinese state-ownedSt ...

's current round of TD-SCDMA trials. UNISOC, then still known as Spreadtrum, was formerly a public company listed on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

, but agreed to an acquisition by Tsinghua Holdings subsidiary

Tsinghua Unigroup Tsinghua Unigroup is a Chinese technology and semiconductor manufacturer that also supplies digital infrastructure and services to domestic and global markets. Based in Beijing, it is among the country’s largest technology conglomerates; subsid ...

, in July 2013, for about

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

1.78 billion; the deal completed on 23 December 2013. In 2014, Tsinghua Unigroup acquired

RDA Microelectronics RDA may refer to: Organisations * Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (African Democratic Rally), a political party formed in 1946 in French West Africa. * Rawalpindi Development Authority, Pakistan. * Reader's Digest Association, a magazine publ ...

for US$907 Million. RDA Microelectronics was a

that designs, develops and markets wireless system-on-chip and radio-frequency semiconductors for cellular, connectivity and broadcast applications. In 2018, the company Spreadtrum Communications and

was merged and rebranded to UNISOC, in which Intel agreed to invest $1.5 billion for a 20 percent stake. The company also began working on a 5G smartphone platform with an

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

5G modem. In February 2018, Spreadtrum was introducing high-end smartphones with

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

. Unisoc released 5G technology platform Makalu 1.0 and 5G baseband chip V510 in February 2019, then, a year later, launched T7520, a 5G SoC initiating the use of 6nm EUV advanced process technology. In 2021, it beat HiSilicon and ranked third in Chinese smartphone AP market share.

Main products

Currently, UNISOC’s main products include mobile communication central processing units, baseband chips, AI chips, radio frequency front-end chips, radio frequency chips and other communication, computing and control chips, which are widely used in consumer electronics fields such as smart phones, smart tablets, and smart wearables, finance, smart logistics, smart power, smart medical and other industries.

References

{{Application ARM-based chips Fabless semiconductor companies Semiconductor companies of China Companies based in Shanghai Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Chinese brands Microprocessors made in China

Research and development

Main products

See also

References