From March 3 to 6, 2025, the Mobile World Congress (MWC2025) kicked off at the Barcelona Convention and Exhibition Center in Spain. As the "wind vane" of the global communications and technology industry, this year's exhibition attracted 2,700 companies from more than 200 countries and regions to participate in the exhibition (an increase of 12% over 2024), including 344 Chinese companies. It accounts for nearly 13%. China Exportsemi will interpret this industry feast for you from the perspective of the semiconductor industry. From the computing power race of AI chips to the intelligent revolution of 5G-A networks, from the breakthrough of semiconductor materials to the geopolitical game, MWC2025 not only shows the rapid progress of technology, but also reveals the deep transformation of the global semiconductor industry chain.
Figure: Semiconductor industry trend mining on MWC2025
Chapter 1: The AI Terminal Revolution: From "Feature Machine" to "Intelligent Computing System"
According to IDC's latest forecast, global generative AI (GenAI) mobile phone shipments will reach 420 million units in 2025, accounting for 28% of the total smartphone market (Source: IDC's AI Mobile Phone Market Outlook 2024). Behind this explosive growth is the paradigm shift of terminal devices from "passive execution of instructions" to "active perception and decision-making".
- Computing power arms race:
In order to support the operation of local large models, the AI computing power threshold of flagship mobile phone SoCs has been raised to 40 TOPS (trillion operations per second). The Qualcomm Snapdragon X85 platform achieves a response time of 1.2 seconds per image in the Stable Diffusion image generation task by integrating the fourth-generation NPU (Neural Network Processor), while the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 uses TSMC's 3nm process to package 12GB of LPDDR6 memory in a mobile phone chip for the first time.
- Material Upgrade Wave:
The high-power consumption of AI terminals places stringent requirements on semiconductor materials. With the characteristics of high temperature resistance and low loss, the penetration rate of silicon carbide (SiC) power devices in mobile phone fast charging modules will jump from 15% in 2023 to 35% in 2025. STMicroelectronics' third-generation SiC MOSFETs have reduced the size of a 100W fast charger to the size of a coin.
In-depth case: Huawei's "Tiangang AI" breakthrough logic
Huawei released the 5G-A base station AI core chip "Tiangang AI" in MWC2025 Using the self-developed da Vinci architecture, the computing power density is 3 times higher than that of traditional base station chips, but the power consumption is reduced by 40%. The chip supports dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) technology, which can serve both 5G-A and 4G users in one frequency band, helping operators save 30% of spectrum investment (Source: Huawei MWC2025 Technical White Paper). For the first time, AI inference capabilities are embedded in the radio access network (RAN), enabling base stations to autonomously optimize signal coverage – for example, by predicting crowd peaks in stadiums through machine learning and adjusting antenna beam pointing in advance.
Pictured: Huawei MWC2025 with his partners
Chapter 2: 5G-A+AI – Neural Networks for an Intelligent World
With the freezing of the 3GPP Release 19 standard, 5G-A (5G-Advanced) has officially entered the countdown to commercial use. Its core breakthrough is to deeply implant AI into the air interface protocol, so that the network can evolve from a "pipe" to an "agent". Ericsson estimates show that 5G-A can compress IIoT latency to 1 millisecond and improve spectral efficiency by 50%.
- Landing in industrial scenarios:
In the "5G-A Smart Factory" project jointly developed by China Mobile and Baosteel, 12,000 sensors are dynamically dispatched by AI to achieve predictive maintenance of equipment, reducing the downtime of the cold rolling production line by 90%. Germany's Bosch used Nokia's "AI-RAN" solution to deploy millimeter-wave base stations at its Munich plant to achieve sub-meter positioning accuracy for AGVs (automated guided vehicles).
- The rise of the low-altitude economy:
China Telecom's 5G-A global coverage network has supported millimeter-level route control for UAVs at a low altitude of 300 meters. During the Asian Games in Hangzhou, the network was combined with 8K VR to transmit a 360-degree image of the torch relay in real time, resulting in a delay of only 0.3 seconds for remote spectators.
Semiconductor Catalytic Effects:
The multi-band support of 5G-A base stations is driving a surge in RF front-end module (FEM) complexity. Qorvo's UMRF5258, for example, integrates 64 filters and 16 power amplifiers to support full-band coverage from 600MHz to 7.2GHz. This will directly drive the gallium nitride (GaN) RF device market to grow from $1.2 billion in 2023 to $2.4 billion in 2025.
Chapter 3: The Semiconductor Game: China's Breakout and Global Fission
Although China's semiconductor output value is expected to exceed 1.2 trillion yuan in 2025, it still faces the risk of "stuck" in the high-end field. According to TrendForce data, SMIC's sub-14nm process capacity accounts for less than 20%, while TSMC's 3nm production line has been fully booked by Apple and NVIDIA.
-Domestic substitution acceleration:
AMEC exhibited a prototype of a 5nm etching machine, whose key parameters (such as 1.5% of 12-inch wafer etching uniformity± 1.5%) are close to the level of similar products of Applied Materials (AMAT). JCET's "chiplet-3D" packaging technology enables 0.5μm pitch interconnection between chips through hybrid bonding, increasing the stacking density of HBM (high-bandwidth memory) by 8 times.
- Geopolitical shocks:
After the U.S. Department of Commerce upgraded its export restrictions on AI chips to China in October 2024, the computing power of H20 chips supplied by NVIDIA to China was castrated to 20% of that of the A100, causing Baidu, Alibaba and other companies to be forced to switch to Huawei's Ascend 910B. At the same time, the European Union invested 43 billion euros to subsidize local manufacturing through the "Chips Act", and STMicroelectronics (ST) announced a new 12-inch silicon carbide wafer fab in France.
A new bureau of ecological competition and cooperation:
In the field of RISC-V open-source architecture, China has taken the lead - the Tracer 1520 processor launched by Pingtou Semiconductor has been successfully installed in China Mobile's 5G-A base station, and its energy efficiency is 25% higher than that of ARM Cortex-A78. The "Ultra Accelerator Link" alliance formed by Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and other companies is trying to curb the ecological expansion of Chinese enterprises by unifying AI accelerator interface standards.
Chapter 4: The Battle for the Future: Redefining Moore's Law
What MWC2025 reveals is not only a technological breakthrough, but also a reconstruction of the underlying logic of the semiconductor industry:
- Material Revolution:
A breakthrough has been made in the research of two-dimensional materials (such as molybdenum disulfide) transistors, and the Belgian Microelectronics Center (IMEC) has successfully fabricated a 0.7nm channel device with a switching speed 10 times faster than that of silicon-based transistors. The application of perovskite quantum dots in Micro LED displays may subvert the existing OLED industry chain.
-Architectural Innovation:
Tesla's Dojo 2.0 supercomputer uses a "wafer-scale system" that integrates 25 D1 chips directly on a 12-inch wafer, improving training efficiency by 30 times. This "de-encapsulation" design has the potential to reshape the chip manufacturing process.
- Sustainable Challenges:
According to the Boston Consulting Group, global data centers will consume 950 billion kWh of electricity by 2025, of which 30% will be used for AI training. TSMC's "Green Fab" plans to reduce energy consumption for 3nm chip production by 15% through liquid immersion cooling technology.
Conclusion: Finding certainty in uncertainty
In the view of China Exportsemi, MWC2025 is like a prism, reflecting the three major trends of the semiconductor industry:
1. Technology convergence: The boundaries between AI, communications, and semiconductors are increasingly blurred, giving rise to a "cloud-edge-end" heterogeneous computing architecture.
2. Ecological differentiation: The competition between RISC-V and Arm/x86, and the game between chiplets and SoCs will reshape the global supply chain.
3. Policy intervention: From the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act to China's 14th Five-Year Plan for Integrated Circuits, the national will is deeply involved in industrial evolution.
As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in his speech at the exhibition, "In the next decade, semiconductors will no longer be just an 'industry,' but an 'infrastructure of civilization.'" "In this storm, Chinese companies must not only overcome the "Everest" of lithography machines and EDA tools, but also look for the second growth curve in open cooperation - because the real victory belongs to those who can both make cores and weave nets.
