After Huawei Mate60 Pro, more domestic mobile phone manufacturers are also pursuing the function of mobile phones directly connected to satellites. The reporter learned from the industry chain that before the end of this year, more other domestic mobile phone manufacturers will also support satellite call functions in their products.

The person familiar with the matter said,The function of direct satellite connection of domestic popular smart phones has a number of original technological breakthroughs, mainly by China Telecom and Huawei Co., LTD., and the follow-up is mainly open to other domestic mobile phone manufacturers in the way of charging authorization.

What are the technical barriers to direct satellite phone calls?

Huawei recently quietly launched the Mate 60 series mobile phone, which instantly triggered a rush of buying. Among them, the Mate 60 Pro also launched the satellite phone function, in the absence of ground network signals, you can also make and receive satellite calls, which makes the phone become the world's first mass smartphone to support satellite calls, causing strong market attention.

The person familiar with the matter said that there are a number of original technological breakthroughs in the function of direct satellite connection of domestic popular smartphones, mainly by China Telecom and Huawei Co. One of these technological breakthroughs is the miniaturization of the antenna, which is hidden inside the phone frame.

According to the person, the current domestic mobile phone satellite call function, are provided by high-orbit satellite signal, compared with the ground base station all over the cellular communication, the former distance from the ground up to 36,000 kilometers, so the signal is also a lot of difference, "antenna can receive signals from high-orbit satellites, but also small, is more difficult."

In addition, there is a ceiling on the capacity of concurrent communication carried by satellite calls at the same time, and considering that more mobile phone manufacturers will provide terminal access in the future, there may be an increase in the number of simultaneous users of satellite calls, and the communication capacity is also a problem.

The aforementioned industry chain said that in response to this problem, on the one hand, satellite communication services will monitor the utilization rate of mobile phone satellite calls to decide whether to expand; On the other hand, agencies are also increasing satellite launches, and the communication capacity problem is expected to be solved in the future.

On the other hand is the chip, smart phone satellite calls need to be equipped with a dedicated Tiantong communications baseband chip. The knowledgeable person told the "Science and Technology Board Daily" reporter, therefore, Huawei and China Telecom specially jointly found a company to develop a satellite call baseband chip on the mobile phone.

However, from the perspective of market supply, in order to ensure the supply of baseband chips for smart phone Tiantong communications, Huawei obviously found more than one institution of the above enterprises.

The reporter noted that the A-share listed company Hualichuangtong announced the layout of the baseband chip business in Tiantong communications, and the company said in the interactive platform that it has developed A satellite communications baseband chip and the corresponding terminal based on the Tiantong communications system, and has been sold and applied abroad.

The reporter learned from a major customer sales person of HualiChuangtong that Hualichuangtong also has cooperation with Huawei. The model is that Huawei provides research and development costs, and Hualichuangtong customizes research and development of Tiantong baseband chips for Mate 60 Pro mobile phones. The sales person said that during the agreement period, such chips can not be sold to other customers, if other customers want to buy such chips from HualiChuangtong, they need to customize them through research and development costs, or wait for Huawei's agreement to expire and purchase similar chips.

"Breaking the sky" mobile phone, market demand?

Amid fierce competition and sluggish demand in the domestic mobile phone industry, a satellite phone that can make and receive calls without a signal in an emergency is tantamount to throwing a deep-water bomb into the quiet mobile phone market.

International Data Corporation (IDC) reported that in the second quarter of 2023, China's smartphone market shipped about 65.7 million units, down 2.1% year-on-year, the decline is significantly narrower than the first quarter.

However, it is worth noting that during the whole "618" mid-year promotion period, in the case of double preferential subsidies for manufacturers and e-commerce platforms, and with greater intensity, smartphone sales still fell by more than 5% year-on-year, and consumer demand continued to be sluggish.

However, from the current market sales situation, Huawei Mate 60 series mobile phone online channel is in the "opening of the sale of seconds not" situation, the major offline Huawei mobile phone store to buy Mate 60 queue scene is also a flood of people, the mobile phone industry has not experienced this famous scene for a long time.

The aforementioned industry chain said that the market demand for smart phones with satellite call function is actually large, but it is still limited by capacity. The reason is that the Kirin 9000S chip used in Huawei Mate 60 Pro, which is to increase the cost, and the second is to cause the production capacity to keep up.

Of course, urging Huawei to raise production capacity is not only the ordinary consumers who queue up to shop, but also the same psychological partner China Telecom.

China Telecom currently holds the exclusive right to operate Tiantong-1 satellite, and only Chinese electrical signal card users can use mobile phones to connect directly to satellite services.

The reporter noted that almost the same time that Mate 60 was sold, China Telecom launched a "mobile phone direct satellite" service, users can install direct satellite services on the basis of their ordinary mobile phone card packages, all telecom packages can be handled, without changing the card or number, open direct satellite function can be used, that is, out of the box.

The aforementioned industry chain said that at this stage, the majority of users who buy Mate 60 Pro mobile phones are rushing to the satellite call function, and more such mobile phones are sold, which means more Chinese Telecom users.

The person gave the reporter a set of data, the current satellite calls at the same time carrying concurrent communication capacity in the hundreds of thousands, but for China Telecom, which provides operator services, the number of such phone cards sold can be in the millions, "to some extent, China Telecom is actually urging Huawei to improve mobile phone production capacity."

However, the person also mentioned that economic benefits are not the main consideration of China Telecom, more is to improve user stickiness, enhance the competitiveness of operators.