Editing by Greg Gao

Hisense, China’s leading TV and appliance maker headquartered in Qingdao, eastern China, completed foundry tape-out of its first self-developed high-end 8K image quality TV chip recently and will begin mass production by the end of this year.

This was disclosed by Wang Wei, vice president of Hisense Visual Technology(海信视像科技) and general manager of Hisense Laser Display Co., Ltd.(海信激光显示有限公司)in a recent interview with JW Insights.

According to Wang, Hisense started developing ICs on its own since 2005, when it produced a digital video processing chip with independent intellectual property rights – the first of this kind in China. Since then, it has launched more than 20 ICs, including AI ones, for TV.

Hisense’s display driver chip products covered the entire series of TV sets from HD to 8K UHD, and its annual shipments are in a leading position in the global market.

In 2020, Hisense’s TCON chip shipments exceeded 40 million, and the cumulative shipment has reached 100 million, with a market share of more than 50%. It also launched a 4K display panel overlay screens and image quality enhancement IC, which is the industry's first single-chip solution that supports Mini-LED direct backlight control with more than 5000 local dimming zones, Wang Wei revealed.

In June last year, Hisense Visual Technology and its partners jointly invested RMB500 million($77 million) in establishing Qingdao Hi-image Technologies Co., Ltd(青岛信芯微电子公司), headquartered in Qingdao, with R&D offices in Shanghai, Xi’an, Kawasaki of Japan, and sales center in Shenzhen. The company is dedicated to developing and promoting smart TV SoC and AI chips.  

Hisense is the latest example of Chinese mainland TV manufacturers trying to develop their own ICs. They started by relying on overseas suppliers like MediaTek for its IC needs.