In the domestic (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) invention patent authorization data for the first half of 2019 released by the State Intellectual Property Office in July, OPPO ranked third with 1,312 invention patent authorizations. Ranked first among companies with the main business.
Recently, OPPO announced that its Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. has signed a patent transfer agreement with Intel, including 58 core patents in the field of cellular mobile communication technology. In addition, OPPO has also acquired more than 500 Ericsson patents, covering the United States, Europe, China, India and other countries and regions. In recent years, OPPO smartphones have performed well both at home and abroad. Now that it is acquiring a large number of patents, what kind of chess game is OPPO planning?
5G mobile phones can be regarded as the first head-to-head confrontation in the opening battle of 5G terminal applications. In the beginning of 2019, various smartphone manufacturers have taken frequent actions, and the mobile communications industry is gradually opening the door to the "5G era".
On February 23, 2019, OPPO held the 2019 Innovation Conference in Barcelona, ??Spain, and officially demonstrated OPPO’s first 5G mobile phone. It is understood that the mobile phone has solved many challenges such as antenna design, baseband, radio frequency, and power consumption, and has complete 5G communication capabilities. Through cooperation with Qualcomm, OPPO completed the world's first 5G Weibo video live broadcast in a real 5G network environment, demonstrating a high-speed, high-reliability, and low-latency communication experience to global users. The release of OPPO's first 5G mobile phone in Barcelona, ??Spain not only shows OPPO's rapid follow-up on 5G, but also clearly reveals its strategic deployment of focusing on overseas.
In the past two years, OPPO’s overseas layout has been officially launched, with continuous layout from point to point, and has entered the strategic stage of a game of chess in the global market. On May 28 last year, OPPO officially announced that Wu Qiang will be fully responsible for OPPO's overall overseas market business from now on. He will lead the OPPO overseas team, integrate resources, and promote the faster development of OPPO's business in overseas markets.
In fact, OPPO has been overseas for more than ten years since 2009. In 2009, while OPPO was building the domestic market, it also deployed overseas from a broader perspective, covering a total of 30 countries and regions in Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania. In 2017, OPPO was the second largest smartphone brand in Vietnam, with a 22% market share. In the Southeast Asian market, OPPO ranked second in the overall market with a share of 17.2%.
In the past ten years, Southeast Asia has become an important contributor to OPPO’s overseas sales. According to Counterpoint, a well-known data research company, OPPO smartphone shipments ranked first in the Asian market in 2017. In the past two years, OPPO's overseas territory has expanded to Egypt, Russia, Japan and other countries and regions.
On June 19, 2018, OPPO released its future flagship OPPO FindX at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. For OPPO, this is not only another stop in its overseas layout, but also an important signal to move from countries or regions with low intellectual property thresholds to countries with strict intellectual property protection.
In fact, expanding overseas markets requires more efforts in product development. When facing foreign mobile phone brands, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers including OPPO, Huawei, and Xiaomi are continuing to invest in technology research and development and carry out Patent layout. Because "technical confidence" is very important.
For all Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, the biggest risk in expanding overseas markets lies in patents. To go global, in addition to having excellent products, you also need to have an advantage in patents. Chinese smartphone companies generally have insufficient overseas patent layout. Once their development threatens the interests of foreign giants, they will face high patent fees without the protection of domestic policies. In the past two years, OPPO has adopted a two-pronged plan of "independent research and development + purchasing core patents" to deal with patent disputes.
In terms of patent purchase, last year, OPPO completed a fairly large-scale patent purchase. It is reported that OPPO has acquired more than 20 patent portfolios from audio giant Dolby Laboratories (Dolby), which mainly covers more than 240 Dolby audio and video technologies.
In addition, OPPO has successively acquired patents from Ericsson, Intel and other companies in many countries. For OPPO, this is not only the fastest and most effective way to enhance its technological advantages, but it also coordinates with OPPO's overseas expansion and avoids the trouble of possible patent disputes in the future.
In terms of independent research and development, OPPO is gradually increasing its layout and investment in the technical field. It has currently established six major research institutes and four major R&D centers around the world. Last month, OPPO launched a new Changan R&D center project. It is understood that Changan's new R&D center will assume the strategic role of OPPO's technology development, and will be mainly responsible for the R&D, design and testing of OPPO's multi-smart terminals, and promote the effective implementation of OPPO's R&D strategies and goals. After the completion of Changan's new R&D center in the future, it will gather more than 5,000 R&D personnel.
In terms of patents, OPPO Vice President and President of Overseas Business Unit Wu Qiang mentioned in a release last year that OPPO had as many as 1,550 patents in imaging alone, including 336 core technology patents. .
Last year, OPPO Global Vice President and President of Mainland China Business Unit Shen Yiren said in an interview with the media that there will be no upper limit on OPPO’s R&D investment next year when it encounters a good project proposal, so the current budget is probably 4 billion. In fact, it is understood that OPPO’s R&D investment this year will reach 10 billion. Obviously, OPPO’s focus has now shifted to technology research and development, and in the future it hopes to use technological innovation to create market leadership.
OPPO, which is paying more and more attention to technology research and development, has already made arrangements for 5G. In 2015, OPPO recruited industry professionals with many years of experience in international standardization to establish a 5G communications standards team to participate in the formulation of 5G standards. The team has participated in the design and formulation of 5G standards for mainstream international standardization organizations such as 3GPP, and has initially gained international influence.
Through the continuous layout of 5G communication standard patents in more than 20 countries and regions around the world in recent years, OPPO has completed more than 2,200 global patent applications. In May 2018, OPPO was the first in the industry to implement 5G video calls using 3D structured light technology, and three months later successfully implemented 5G signaling and data link connections. Since then, it has successively realized 5G Internet access for OPPO mobile phones, the world's first 5G mobile phone WeChat multi-person video call, and the display of Find X 5G prototypes, etc.
In fact, the future mobile market is more than just smartphones. Actively looking for the next core entrance and meeting diverse user scenarios in the future are the key to winning the future market. And OPPO’s series of actions are not limited to smartphones. In January this year, OPPO announced the establishment of an emerging mobile terminal division. This is OPPO's key layout for the 5G+ era, with the purpose of building its future-oriented multi-entry intelligent hardware network.
Today, OPPO is making every effort to build its own global R&D system. Coupled with its years of accumulation in mobile phone products, software engineering, Internet services and other fields, OPPO is expected to gain first-mover advantages in the emerging mobile terminal market facing the future. .