Recently Brand Finance, a UK-based brand appraisal agency, has released the brand value rankings of the top 20 semiconductor enterprises in 2022 (SEMICONDUCTORS 20 2022). According to the evaluation agency, the total value of the top 20 semiconductor brands reaches up to 134.9 billion dollars, among which 10 American brands are worth 79.5 billion dollars. None of our Chinese semiconductor companies are on the list. Intel, TSMC and Nvidia rank the top three, which is well-known to us, with brand values of 25.612 billion, 20.474 billion and 16.1 billion dollars respectively.

Source: Aipusou auto graphics

Brand value can be interpreted as the net economic benefit gained by its brand owner through licensing the brand on the open market. In a way, what have gradually become the key to competition in the semiconductor industry are the content and value which its brand delivering to customers.

As the CEO of Slkor company, Song Shiqiang believes that the marketing of a company is always the most important thing.  He borrowed the words of Ye Maozhong, a famous marketing expert, who said that the essence of marketing is an insight into demands, which are found in the conflict between supplies and needs. So where there is the conflict, there is the marketing.  Products can solve short-term conflicts, while brands can solve long-term conflicts. Therefore, since the establishment of Slkor and Kinghelm, Mr. Song attaches great importance to the brand building of “Slkor|” and “Kinghelm”!

Picture: Slogen of SLkor "Become the leader of domestic semiconductor industry" 

“The brand is powerful and can bring huge social and commercial value to its owner” Mr. Song said. So the brand “Slkor” is the same value to Slkor and “Kinghelm” is the same value to Kinghelm Electronics.

Song Shiqiang is a private economic researcher of the Economic Development Center of the State Council, a member of the electronic information expert database of China Association for Science and Technology, and a commercial research expert of Huaqiang North. Mr. Song used to be a CEO of an international real estate listed company. He invests and manages Shenzhen SlkorMicro Semicon Co., Ltd. & Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd., and builds " Slkor" and "Kinghelm" brands.  

Mr. Song has been concerned about the brand building of Kinghelm and Slkor, studying the underlying logic of it.  Mr. Song shared his understanding of the "brand" to the reporter, the main points are as follows:

First, the brand is the guarantee of quality. Brands are with us all the time, and they are closely related to us, including food, clothing, housing, transportation and other accessible things. When we buy something, especially valuables, we should consider quality, durability, safety and other factors. Though it’s a little more expensive, we will find a trusted brand. This not only reflects people's trust and reliance on the quality of a brand deep inside, but also the guarantee of big brand products in the maintenance of after-sales.

Picture: a propaganda pattern of SiC MOS product of Slkor

Second, the brand represents positioning. The brand can be divided into three grades, the upper, middle and lower, and it also has a market segment positioning. For instance, watches of Patek Philippe and bags of Hermes symbolize the ultimate luxury, whose buyers are usually either rich or of figure, showing their identity and temperament. As for the ordinary stuff like multi-layered cloth shoes of old Beijing "Neiliansheng" we old men wearing are very comfortable and practical, and it’s a good choice for middle-aged and elderly people to travel or stay at home.  The same goes for these situations, we wear Nike and Adidas when playing sports, Zegna suits for high-end business events, and a Montblanc pen for the signature of important contracts.

Third, Brand is spiritual comfort and dependence. Brands can evoke subtle feelings, for example American soldiers fighting overseas in World War II saw a "Coca-Cola" billboard as if they were getting a plane ticket home.  When Chinese people use Huawei mobile phones, Qingdao Haier refrigerators and Lenovo computers, they will feel at ease in a foreign land, which is like eating food cooked by your mother all of a sudden after many years away from home.

Fourth, the brand represents taste. Birds of a feather flock together, and so do brands. In a shopping mall, you will always see Nike and Adidas stores compete face to face, McDonald's and KFC as well. Of course, there are also local fast food restaurants called "steaming kung Fu" joined their competition. Some of my wealthy friends in Huaqiang North often smoke with a Cuban cigar in one hand and sip Scotch whisky. Tsingtao beer and C’estbon mineral water are definitely rejected in this scene, which is now called "class circle".  There used to be a sports car of European brand, whose steering wheel leather must choose Hermes and manually sewed, that’s the same thing!

Picture: a propaganda pattern of Kinghelm website

Finally, Song shiqiang concluded that international semiconductor companies of big brands spend lots of money on the promotion and value building of their brand every year. In the early stage, Renesas also promoted its corporate brand through public media systems, such as magazines, billboards, lectures, training courses, forums and other forms, as well as joint research and development projects with the government and universities. These patterns are also learned and applied by "Slkor" and "Kinghelm"!  The Vivardi antenna developed by Kinghelm in cooperation with Datang Telecom has been applied to teaching and testing for undergraduate students majoring in microwave radio frequency in colleges and universities.  

Picture: Song Shiqiang, the CEO of Slkor and Kinghelm

In recent years, Song Shiqiang founded two companies Kinghelm and Slkor, which prospered in the "domestic substitution of semiconductors" field and microwave RF connectors for Beidou navigation and positioning antenna. The growing influence of these two brands "Kinghelm" and "Slkor" is getting greater, showing a strong momentum of development, which makes the whole industry impressive.

In the intelligent era embracing the Internet of everything, Mr. Song has made remarkable achievements in brand building and marketing, corporate culture construction as well as other aspects of "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" with his hard work in the electronics industry for many years and profound understanding of Internet marketing.

How did Mr. Song build the brand "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" in the Internet era?  In his opinion, the Internet propaganda has a low marginal cost and the information can be accessible to its users directly in the first time, which is one-to-many, many-to-many efficient form of communication as well as a revolution of traditional propaganda and sales. Traditional semiconductor factories have been infiltrated for many years, we must figure out the method in new business models and application tools if we want to catch up or even surpass.

First of all, we bound big IP for promotion. For example, I bound the word "Huaqiang North" so I wrote a lot of articles about "Huaqiang North" especially, combining the industry relevance and fun propagation strongly, and its effect is very good. Secondly, in the construction of Internet ecology, "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" strive to achieve uniqueness and firstness on the Internet, whose products and promotional pictures have a strong visual impact and recognition. Of course, in order to catch much attention of the public, we need to create the conflict and controversy in the early stage, such as our keywords "Kinghelm Connects Beidou", "Slkor SiC Expert", "Huaqiang North Proprietress", which is a good example.

Song Shiqiang's personal IP, Kinghelm and Slkor are all first-class celebrated brands online, which support and drive each other, becoming a publicity matrix with Kinghelm’s website(www.bds666.com) and Slkor’s website(www.slkormicro.com). Kinghelm and Slkor have established powerful cooperation with these Internet platform companies, such as Lichuang Mall, Yunhan Chip City, IC Hunt, All Chips, Electronic Fans, and Sekorm E-commerce. By means of the Internet platform, the brand and products of Kinghelm (www.bds666.com) can be quickly displayed in front of R&D engineers of electronic components industry via the screen of PC desktop and mobile phone.

"Slkor" and "Kinghelm" brands have to be recognized by the customers and dealers in all aspects. Firstly, let customers familiar with the company's products, quality, technical service and product image. Internal factors also test a company's R&D and technological invention capacity, which Slkor attaches great importance to all the time. Secondly, the products’ quality and the company's service are of value as well. Only the three different parts should be done very well will it drive the competitiveness of the product and the development of the enterprise.

Slkor achieved a compound growth of 40 percent in each quarter of 2021. In terms of the differentiation competition of Slkor, Mr. Song said that we planned to increase the product categories and improve customer service, R&D of new products as well as the quality control. After enhancing its strength, Slkor will enter into the big market aggressively and later challenge the industry giants.

The earliest products of "Kinghelm" are Beidou navigation and positioning modules and Beidou GPS antennas, which can directly replace American GPS module and navigation and positioning GPS antenna. Under the leadership of its founder Song Shiqiang, Kinghelm has made great contributions to the "Native Substitute" in the application market of vehicle-mounted and missile-borne field for China's BDS.

Picture: the slogan “Kinghelm Connects Beidou” on the background wall of corporate culture

The slogen of Slkor is "Slkor resolve to become the leader of domestic semiconductor". Song Shiqiang believed that the key to build brand value consists of the quality and service of product, professional talents and team, technological innovation, and the launch of new products. Slkor is an innovation-driven company based on R&D, benchmarking Texas Instruments of the USA. Slkor still has a lot of room for improvement in the process of native substitution. Due to the small sales volume of our new brand, most of our previous expenses were spent on R&D. As our sales amount has increased, the proportion of R&D has decreased, but the absolute amount of money we spent has increased. We hope Slkor become a company with comprehensive products and high brand value.

With the increase of the feedback data of terminal customers on the products, the more experience Slkor has accumulated, the more mature its products are, then the more profit it will make, and the more it will invest in the new generation of R&D. Slkor closely follows the development of international technology and constantly promotes product upgrade by means of continuous technological innovation, meanwhile it actively permeates into the middle and high-end market. After all, constant depth of the technology R&D is the key to the long-term development of any semiconductor enterprise, which is also the reason why the clients are so crazy about "Slkor" because of its strong R&D competence of new products and solid technology.

Kinghelm and Slkor have seen the initial effect in terms of the "native substitute" of products through years of efforts. Mr. Song will lead his team and make all-out efforts to build the corporate culture of Kinghelm and Slkor in 2022. The team will take “integrity”, “innovation”, “toughness”, and “detail” as the code of conduct, and build a wolf team with the corporate culture of simple sincerity, continuous progress, unremitting perseverance and details control. I wish Kinghelm and Slkor a new breakthrough in 2022 then set sail and make new achievements in the New Year under the leadership of Mr. Song.

Brief Introduction of Song Shiqiang

On top of being a private economic researcher of the Economic Development Center of the State Council, Song Shiqiang is also a member of the electronic information expert database of China Association for Science and Technology, and a commercial research expert of Huaqiang North. Mr. Song was the former CEO of an international real estate listed company. He has invested and managed a list of companies such as Shenzhen SlkorMicro Semicon Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd., building the "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" brands. Both "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" are national high-tech companies and they have obtained dozens of invention patents and software copyrights. In addition, Slkor is one of the fastest-growing semiconductor companies in China, and its vision is to become "the leader of the domestic semiconductor industry".

 "Kinghelm Connecting Beidou" is the slogan of Kinghelm company. Beginning from the development of Beidou antenna, Kinghelm has developed and produced microwave antenna, RF connection line and electrical signal connector and other products, embracing the intelligent era for Internet of Everything.  Song Shiqiang has a wide reputation and influence in the semiconductor, Beidou positioning and navigation industry. As one of the renowned business leaders in Huaqiang North Commercial Area of Shenzhen, Mr. Song is striving to make his best efforts to improve the business environment, hoping that Huaqiang North will become a catalyst for reform and opening the window of Shenzhen's economic development.