Starting from 2009, China’s smartphone history has gone through more than ten years. Whether it is the domestic market or the international market, the total market share of many domestic mobile phone brands exceeds 85% and 85% respectively. 55. It can be said that domestically produced smartphones occupy an absolutely dominant position in the domestic market, and already account for half of the global market.
However, the victory in market share is only the first step in the victory of Chinese smartphone brands. How to extend the advantage of market share to the technical level has become a new topic before China's major manufacturers. The latest report from Tencent's "Shenzhen Web" shows that domestic first-tier mobile phone manufacturer OPPO is about to release a self-developed ISP chip, also known as an image signal processor, which is expected to be installed on the flagship Find X4 series in early 2022.
More importantly, in addition to ISP chips (Image Signal Processors), OPPO is simultaneously advancing its self-developed SOC chip plan, which may replace some Qualcomm and MediaTek chips in the future. Currently, OPPO’s self-developed chip project team There are already about a thousand people, and the core members are mainly from world-class chip R&D companies such as MediaTek.
In fact, whether it is ISP chips (Image Signal Processors) or SOC chip plans, we are not surprised by news like this from OPPO. The reason is that OPPO has been developing self-developed chips for a long time. As early as February 2020, OPPO's CEO's special assistant released the "Mariana Plan" about self-developed chips. Now nearly a year and a half has passed. A well-known blogger Digital Chat Station has previously made it clear: OPPO's " The first project results produced by "Project Mariana" are about to be made public, but they are not the mobile phone SOC chips that everyone is most looking forward to, but other types of chips.
According to incomplete statistical information from Jiweiwang, in the past two years, OPPO has invested in more than 8 companies in the semiconductor field, including Nanxin Semiconductor, Shanghai Hanwei, and Weicheng Electronics , Changjing Technology, Wei Zhao Semiconductor, etc. Taking Nanxin Semiconductor as an example, the company focuses on lithium battery-related charging management, charge pump/DCDC/ACDC power conversion, wired/wireless fast charging protocols, lithium battery protection and other power management fields, and has a certain say in the entire battery field.
When making cores, OPPO is also constantly strengthening the moat of its entire technology patents, including 5G, fast charging, artificial intelligence, imaging and many other fields. The patent layout is at the forefront of the industry. Relevant data shows that as of June 30, 2021, OPPO has more than 65,000 global patent applications and more than 30,000 global authorizations. Among them, 5G communication standard patents, 3,900 global patent applications and more than 2,500 AI patent applications have been completed. , more than 8,800 imaging patent applications, more than 3,000 fast charging patent applications, etc. The comprehensive patent layout is rare in the industry.
Compared with European, American, Japanese and Korean companies, it is an indisputable fact that China’s chip manufacturing industry has a weak foundation, a late start, and slow development. The reason why domestic manufacturers represented by OPPO are making chips one after another is not only to get rid of products In addition to homogeneity, it is more about mastering core technologies for oneself. Imaging performance is currently the core selling point of high-end mobile phones, and the difficulty of ISP is far less than that of SoC. Therefore, starting with a dedicated ISP chip with a lower threshold is obviously a more robust self-developed chip model. I believe that OPPO’s ISP chip will not make us wait too long.