Earlier this year, Google announced that they will be using their own custom chipset, called Tensor, on the Pixel 6 line up, thus joining Samsung and Apple as companies that develop their own in house processors to power their flagship devices.
Oppo, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker by shipments, now also has plans to join this club by developing its own custom chipsets for mobile phones in either 2023 or 2024, depending on the speed of development reports Notebookcheck.
The main motivation behind phone manufacturers developing their own processors is the need to gain more control over core components and to reduce reliance on semiconductor suppliers like Qualcomm and MediaTek.
“If everyone is using Qualcomm’s chipsets for flagship phones, then it’s very hard to claim that you have unique performance and products,” Brady Wang, an analyst with Counterpoint says.
“Meanwhile, you have to compete for allocations of chips and resources with your competitors during a time of shortage, and do not have direct visibility of your chip supply chain.”
Just like Samsung and Apple, Oppo will prioritize developing high-performance chipsets for their flagship models, with the middle range and low-end devices expected to continue rocking chipsets from Qualcomm and MediaTek.
This is clearly a sign that Oppo is committed to developing high-end mobile devices capable of trading blows with the likes of Apple, Samsung and now Google at the very top end of the table in terms of performance and innovation.
Oppo will reportedly aim to use the 3nm chip production technology offered by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker.
Intel and Apple are two of the major players in the tech industry that also use TSMC for their state-of-the-art technology.
Following the United States sanctions that derailed Huawei’s electronics business, Oppo has ramped up its chip investments by hiring developers and Artificial Intelligence experts from MediaTek, Qualcomm and Huawei.
The Chinese company is also reportedly working on its own AI algorithms, as well as customized image signal processors for its handset cameras. This is a direct response to their domestic rivals Xiaomi and Vivo who have the same capabilities in-house, as more smartphone buyers are basing their phone purchases on camera quality.
Industry experts however do not expect Oppo’s venture to be smooth sailing, as developing custom processors comes with certain risks, one of them being the chipsets might not perform as reliably as standardized offerings from established suppliers.
Exynos, Samsung’s custom chip, has been plagued with reports of overheating and quick battery draining despite the South Korean company being a major player in developing smartphone processors.
“That’s why we don’t see a lot of players boldly use their own mobile processors, and why most of them started from developing image signal processing chips first,” says Eric Tseng, lead analyst at Isaiah Research.
Since Oppo shares ownership with Vivo, Realme and OnePlus, their custom processors, should they be successful, are most likely to also find their way to these other devices, further reducing the market share of other third-party chip manufacturers i.e. Qualcomm and MediaTek.
