OPPO is looking into developing their own chipset

Out of the big players in the Android smartphone industry, only HUAWEI and Samsung has the ability to design their own chipsets. Even then, both HUAWEI’s Kirin and Samsung’s Exynos are widely considered inferior to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. Xiaomi had a brief stint with a chip called the Surge S1, although it was featured in a single device that never made it to our shores. To makes matters worse, there was no successor to the chip. Despite all that, OPPO might be joining the fray of the few esteemed smartphone makers who also make their own chips.

A recent hire at OPPO is Chan Yen, who will be leading the OPPO TMG Technical Committee. He served as the technical director during his time at Qualcomm, so he knows his stuff. The chip-making endeavor is reportedly joined by both realme and OnePlus, which might mean that most of BBK Electronics subsidiary will use the homegrown chips.

OPPO’s CEO Chen Yongming has also announced that he would be injecting 50 billion yuan in R&D funds over the next three years, which will include the budget to develop the new OPPO chipset. OPPO has previously announced the OPPO M1 chipset, so you can consider that OPPO was testing the waters back then. OPPO entering the chipset business might be quite interesting too, especially if OnePlus and realme will also use them.

Technology photo created by xb100 – www.freepik.com

Pokdepinion: I am quite interested to see whether OPPO will target the high end straight away or just go for the mid-range… Also, it means more business for either TSMC or GloFo.