Last updated: February 22, 2023, 7:45 AM IST
Oppo’s chipset plans could become a reality in 2024
Oppo is the latest smartphone brand to dip its toes into the chip manufacturing segment, competing with giants like Apple and Samsung.
Oppo is the latest tech giant to have plans for its own chipset that will become part of its products in the coming years. New reports coming out this week suggest that Oppo will announce its internal chip in 2024. We’ve been hearing about Oppo’s chip plans for the past few years, so we’d wait and see if this timeline pans out.
The development will certainly come as a surprise to chip giants such as Qualcomm and MediaTek, who have been regular partners with Oppo for its smartphones over the years. And the prospect of an Oppo phone with an embedded chip is likely to spark excitement in the market.
Oppo has already brought a neural processing unit (NPU) and connectivity chip as part of its MariSilicon range, but having a system-on-chip (SoC) will be a game changer for the tech behemoth. Its report states that the major chip design process has already been completed, making the 2024 timeline realistic for the company.
We’ve heard previous reports of Oppo relying on TSMC’s expertise to manufacture its chipset based on the 4nm architecture. We still do not know the nature of the SoC to be produced, whether it is suitable for high-end or mid-range devices. But the chip manufacturing node process strongly hints at a flagship product using the new hardware.
Using an internal chipset also means better software-hardware integration for devices, something that has been difficult for Android phone makers to achieve over the years.
And Oppo’s decision to move its hardware in-house could directly feed into its other brands, most notably OnePlus, which is now part of the Oppo device ecosystem.
Apple and Samsung have been veterans in this department, with their A-series and Exynos SoC for mobile devices. Even Google competed with the Pixel 6 series in 2021 with the Tensor chip.
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