The US-China trade war has changed the dynamics of the technology industry like nothing else. As an aftereffect, Huawei’s growth has been crippled. It cannot use Google Mobile Service nor does it have easy access to critical components like a smartphone processor anymore. As a result, Huawei’s smartphones are literally a no go outside China and the company has been busy in finding appropriate “partners” to get component supplies.
As an after effect, other Chinese smartphone brands are also now focusing more on becoming self-reliant and using decreasing their dependence on US companies like Qualcomm etc. Oppo is one such company that as per previous reports has been on a hiring spree recruiting experts from various chip makers. Now, Caixin reports that Oppo’s President in China Liu Bo has confirmed that the company plans to make its own mobile chipsets.
Planning ahead
The new custom proprietary chip, reportedly called as Oppo M1 is, already listed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the report said. The person-in-charge of this project in Oppo is Yan Chen who was associated with Qualcomm earlier. Chen had earlier helped companies like Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei etc. in deploying the Snapdragon 615 SoC on their devices.
This move by Oppo is seen as crucial for driving growth for the company in the future and the company plans to continue to work closely with key partners like Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung for developing the “Mariana Plan”.
This is not the first time that Oppo has spoken about developing a homegrown solution for Smartphone SoCs. Earlier, at the Inno Day conference, Oppo’s founder and CEO Tony Chen stated that the company has earmarked CNY 50 billion for investment in key core technologies like hardware, software, and system.
Apart from Oppo, even Xiaomi had been investing heavily in developing its own SoC, though its first attempt Surge S1 didn’t fare well, the company still aims at putting in serious efforts in this direction. Huawei, on the other hand, has been quite successful in this regard and has been shipping out smartphones with its own SoCs for years now.
Via: CNBeta
