Oppo seems to be working on developing its own chips

Oppo appears to be working on chip development with recruiting many staff from MediaTek and Unisoc, Nikkei reports. The largest smartphone makers each have their own division to develop their own socs.

Oppo confirms to Nikkei that it has the capabilities to develop its own chips, but does not say anything about the plans. The Chinese smartphone maker has hired many people since last year who come from MediaTek and Unisoc and have spent years developing Armsocs there.

It is unknown what exactly Oppo wants. Just like Samsung, Apple and Huawei, it can start designing its own socs, but it can also focus on designing separate chips for certain functionality, just like Google, for example. Google has been making a Pixel Visual Core chip for photo processing and a Titan M security chip for some time now.

Apple has been designing its own socs for smartphones and tablets for ten years, Samsung has been doing that for even longer. Huawei first released a smartphone with its own soc in 2011. Xiaomi also put its own soc in a smartphone in 2017, but it stayed with a single model.

Oppo is affiliated with brands such as OnePlus, Vivo and Realme and falls under the Chinese BBK Electronics. The smartphone maker lost market share in the global smartphone market, but deliveries in Europe rose sharply, partly due to deals with European providers. Oppo mainly uses Qualcomm socs in its current phones.