Wi-Fi chips are functionally categorized into STA (Station) and AP (Access Point). Over the past few years, breakthroughs in domestically produced Wi-Fi have primarily focused on the STA field—Wi-Fi modules in set-top boxes, cameras, and IoT devices—where domestically produced chips have already captured a significant market share. However, the situation is quite different for AP chips.
The AP chip is the central hub of a Wi-Fi network, handling concurrent access from multiple devices, scheduling channel resources, managing QoS queues, and ensuring overall network stability. It is widely acknowledged in the industry that the R&D difficulty and investment required for AP chips are far greater than those for STA chips. According to data from Shangpu Consulting, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and MediaTek collectively hold over 70% of the global high-end Wi-Fi chip market share, while domestic companies account for only about 4.86%. In core AP scenarios such as routers and smart gateways, the penetration rate of domestically produced chips has long remained low.
The direct consequence of this situation is that domestic manufacturers of routers, gateways, and optical modems have almost no domestically produced chips to choose from in their AP product lines. Supply chain security is one layer of pressure, and cost control is another—without alternatives, bargaining power is extremely limited.
The significance of the WQ9301 lies in the fact that it has, for the first time, transformed the concept of "domestic AP chip" into a product that can be inquired about, sampled, and evaluated for mass production.
The WQ9301, launched by Wuqi Microelectronics, is one of the very few mass-produced RISC-V architecture Wi-Fi 6 router chips in China. Based on its publicly available specifications, it is positioned to directly compete with mainstream Wi-Fi 6 access point (AP) solutions.
The architecture employs a RISC-V multi-core instruction set, runs the IEEE 802.11ax protocol stack, and is backward compatible with 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. In terms of speed, it supports 160MHz bandwidth and 1024QAM modulation, utilizes DL/UL MU-MIMO and OFDMA technologies, and achieves a maximum dual-band concurrent speed of 3Gbps at the physical layer, targeting 4K/8K video and large-scale online gaming scenarios. The radio frequency (RF) is the chip's core differentiator: It features a self-developed 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual-band RF circuit and a unique high-performance CMOS PA technology, controlling power consumption and heat generation while ensuring transmit power. In terms of integration, a single chip integrates baseband, RF, and FEM, while also supporting external FEM solutions to meet diverse needs.
More importantly, there's the progress of industrialization. The WQ9301 has passed authoritative industry certification and domestic production assessment, and has already achieved small-batch supply to ZTE Microelectronics and Changhong. It is expected to be adopted by major terminal customers such as China Mobile by 2026. Simultaneously, Wuqi is advancing the development of Wi-Fi 7 AP chips, aiming to complete Wi-Fi Alliance certification as early as the end of 2026.
This means that the WQ9301 is not just a chip that remains in the release draft, but has already entered the evaluation and adoption process by real customers. For terminal manufacturers that make routers, smart gateways, and set-top boxes, there is finally a domestic AP solution that they can seriously evaluate.
A Wi-Fi chip is shipped as a packaged bare die, but terminal manufacturers need a module that can be plugged in and run immediately. Antenna matching, RF calibration, driver adaptation, heat dissipation design, protocol stack verification, certification testing—if these tasks are not completed, the chip's performance cannot be released, and the terminal product cannot be launched . This is what OufiXin does.
It's a proven fact that the Wuqi WQ9201 chip has been adopted by multiple China Mobile set-top boxes and has achieved mass production. The O9201SB module developed by Oufexin based on this chip is a crucial link in this mass production chain. This module, measuring only 13×15mm, supports 2×2 MU-MIMO and dual-band concurrency, addressing the pain points of video stuttering and game latency in set-top box scenarios. From chip to module to bulk procurement by operators, this path has been successfully established.
Designed for industrial applications, the O9201PM module from Oufexin adopts an M.2 interface and PCIe protocol, and has completed driver adaptation on domestic platforms such as RK3588, Allwinner, and Rockchip. Power consumption is reduced by 40% when Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work together. This demonstrates that Oufexin's capabilities extend beyond consumer-grade modules, and it also has delivery experience in domestic IT innovation and industrial control scenarios.
When the WQ9301 entered the modularization stage, Oufexin's existing mass production experience with the Wuqi solution constituted a real first-mover advantage. New module manufacturers would need to go through the entire process of RF calibration, driver adaptation, and certification testing from scratch, while Oufexin had already accumulated a large amount of reusable engineering data and production line experience on the Wuqi platform.
A common misconception is that Wi-Fi 7 is rapidly becoming widespread, so is it too late to develop Wi-Fi 6 AP chips now? The data tells us otherwise.
According to a report by Luotu Technology, in the first half of 2026, Wi-Fi 6 accounted for 57.5% of the online market share for home routers in China, while Wi-Fi 7 accounted for 30.1%. Wi-Fi 6, with its cost-effectiveness advantage in the core price range of 100-300 yuan, covers the replacement needs of the vast majority of ordinary families and remains the absolute market mainstream. More macro-level data comes from Shangpu Consulting: in 2024, China's Wi-Fi chip shipments exceeded 2 billion units, with a market size approaching 40 billion yuan; it is projected that the Chinese market size will reach 100 billion yuan by 2030, but domestic companies currently only hold about 4.86% of the high-end chip market share. This figure itself illustrates the substitution potential of domestic AP chips—not a competition for existing market share, but a climb from almost zero to a double-digit market share.
For Oufexin's target customers—set-top box manufacturers, gateway manufacturers, and industrial control equipment manufacturers—Wi-Fi 6 is currently the product line with the largest shipment volume, and the availability of domestic AP chips is directly related to BOM cost and supply chain security.
While the options for domestically produced Wi-Fi AP chips are indeed increasing, more options do not equate to easier implementation. The transition from "sampleable" to "mass-producible module" for a new chip involves a series of significant challenges, including RF debugging, driver adaptation, certification cycles, and production line yield ramp-up. If a terminal manufacturer chooses a module supplier without experience in mass-producing that chip platform, the project risks will not automatically disappear simply because "domestic chips are available."
Oufeixin's core value lies not in its "distribution" of Wuqi's chips, but in its completion of a full engineering loop from chip to module on the Wuqi platform, which has been validated by mass shipments of China Mobile set-top boxes. When the WQ9301 enters the modularization stage, this proven engineering system can be directly reused, significantly reducing the adoption cycle for end customers.
Congratulations again to Wuqi on the successful deployment of its WQ9301. For router, gateway, and set-top box manufacturers evaluating domestic AP solutions, the most pragmatic choice is not to wait for "more chip options," but to find a module partner that has already successfully run mass production using domestic chips . The combination of Oufexin and Wuqi provides a starting point for immediate evaluation.
Data source notes : Wuqi WQ9301 parameters and industrialization progress are from reports by China Electronics Network and IT Times, as well as Wuqi's IPO prospectus; Oufexin module and mass production information are from Oufexin's official public information and reports by Electronic Engineering Times; market size data is from Shangpu Consulting's "WiFi Chip Industry Research Report (2026)"; router market structure data is from Luotu Technology's online market statistics for the first half of 2026.
