Marisliken x
For global smartphone manufacturers, self-developed chips have long been an indispensable core competitiveness. Whether it's Samsung, Apple, Huawei, which have succeeded in self-developed chips, or OPPO, Xiaomi, and vivo, which are working hard. Especially when the global smart phone market tends to be saturated and the competition is becoming more and more fierce, the self-developed chip can not only better coordinate its own software and hardware, solve the pain points that users care about, but also bring more differentiated selling points to mobile phone brand manufacturers and help to open up high-end markets.
Therefore, in 20 19, OPPO has set up a self-developed chip team, including Zhu shangzu, former chief operating officer of MediaTek, Zhong Lin, former general manager of MediaTek wireless communication division, and jiang bo, former senior product director of Qualcomm. And announced that it will invest 50 billion yuan in related research and development fields within three years.
However, OPPO did not develop a more difficult and competitive mobile phone SoC from the beginning like Xiaomi, but chose the image NPU to make a breakthrough.
On February 4th, 65438 last year, on OPPO INNO DAY 202 1, OPPO officially released the first self-developed chip-Mariana MariSilicon X with 6 nm process. MariSilicon X is undoubtedly a high-level high-end image NPU chip, no matter from the official hardware indicators or the image processing effect compared with competing products.
Then on February 24th this year, the first flagship Find X5 series equipped with MariSilicon X was officially released. The first sales after Find X5 series are also quite eye-catching, covering the full-price sales of Android phones in OPPO Mall, JD.COM, Tmall and Suning.cn & the champion of both sales.
After the success of MariSilicon X, although OPPO didn't disclose the plan of self-developing mobile phone AP and SoC, jiang bo, senior director of OPPO chip products, revealed in an interview with Xinzhixun that the chip R&D team formed by OPPO has reached 2,000 people, many of whom are from first-line semiconductor manufacturers.
Obviously, if it is only limited to the research and development of NPU chips or other related peripheral chips, there is no need for a chip research and development team of more than 2,000 people. The latest news also shows that OPPO is currently developing its own mobile phone AP and SoC chips.
According to reports, OPPO's first self-developed AP chip is based on the core design of Arm architecture processor and will be produced by TSMC 6nm process. By then, Qualcomm's 5G baseband chip may be inserted and is expected to be officially launched next year.
The mobile phone SoC integrated with 5G baseband, except AP, will be developed by OPPO, and the 5G baseband part may also be developed by OPPO. However, there are also reports in the market that OPPO intends to seek authorization from other manufacturers with the existing 5G baseband technology. The industry believes that from the technical advancement of OPPO, the research and development of mobile phone SoC chip integrating AP and baseband should be completed in 2024 and manufactured by TSMC's 4nm process.
For OPPO, it is extremely difficult to independently develop baseband chips, and if it is to be used in smart phones, it must be compatible with 2/3/4G technologies in addition to supporting 5G, which involves a large number of communication technology research and development and patent thresholds. In addition, it will also involve on-site testing by global operators. This investment is not only huge, but also long. Therefore, Xin Zhixun believes that OPPO is more likely to choose technology licensing cooperation with existing 5G baseband technology manufacturers.
You know, even if it is better than Apple, its self-developed baseband chip has encountered many twists and turns. It was not until 20 19 acquired the baseband chip business of Intel mobile phones that it was further accelerated. It is expected that SoC integrated with self-developed 5G baseband will be launched as soon as next year.
Then, given that Huawei's self-developed chips can't be manufactured due to US sanctions, and the mobile phone business has also shrunk in an all-round way, is it possible for OPPO to cooperate with Huawei, obtain Huawei's 5G baseband technology and patent authorization, and integrate it into its own mobile phone SoC?
Therefore, OPPO is more likely to cooperate with other 5G baseband chip suppliers such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and Zhanrui.