OEMs to ‘Aggressively Push’ 5G Into Lower-Price Phones, Says Pixelworks

Smartphone market “conditions and visibility” began improving in 2020's second half, as consumers and handset OEMs “adjusted to the new COVID environment,” said Pixelworks CEO Todd DeBonis Q4 call Thursday. It was a “down year” for the handset industry, he said. Global smartphone unit shipments fell 8% from 2019. Pixelworks supplies video processing chips and software to makers of mainstream-priced smartphones. Oppo and TCL are its top customers. Handset OEMs “delayed or canceled numerous planned phone launches” in 2020, said DeBonis. Though the rollout of 5G-enabled smartphones began to gain momentum in the second half of the year, “total 5G units shipped proved to be much lower than was forecast entering 2020,” he said. A “notable trend” during 2020 was the introduction of the first mainstream handsets to feature higher frame rate displays, “coupled with a broader shift by OEMs from LCD to OLED displays due to an increased availability and more competitive pricing,” he said. Pixelworks technology was embedded into 16 handset models from seven OEMs in 2020, compared with six smartphone models launched across four OEMs in 2019, he said. The rollout of 5G phones will become “more pervasive” in 2021, said DeBonis. High-quality video and gaming are “the most obvious applications for leveraging the substantially higher bandwidth and low latency of 5G in mobile devices,” he said. Market data suggests “the global consumer appetite for $1,000-plus phones is shrinking,” he said. “We expect mobile OEMs to aggressively push 5G technology down the cost curve to lower price models.”