Chinese smartphone giant OPPO's affiliate Dongguan OPPO Communication Technology Co recently added the design, development, and sale of semiconductors and their components to its business scope, information from data provider Qichacha shows.
The company was founded in 2018 with a registered capital of RMB 50 million ($7.74million) and is wholly owned by OPPO Guangdong Mobile Telecommunications Co.
At the OPPO Future Technology Conference held in 2019, Tony Chen, founder and CEO of OPPO, said that OPPO's total R&D investment in technology will reach RMB 50 billion in the next three years.
In February last year, Chinese media reported OPPO's in-house developed chip plan, the "Mariana Plan," saying that its budget for self-research chips was included in the previously planned RMB 50 billion.
Mariana is the deepest trench in the world and one of the harshest environments on earth, and OPPO used it to describe its in-house developed chip as a matter of extreme difficulty.
In March this year, a digital blogger said that the results of OPPO's "Mariana" in-house developed chip project will soon be available, and is not currently applied to the core integrated SOC chip, is expected to be used for smartphone auxiliary computing "M1" chip.
OPPO previously said that the core strategy is to do a good job on the product, any investment in research and development is to enhance the competitiveness of the product and enhance the user experience, and will not change the current relationship with partners.
"We develop the chip is to serve the user ultimately, which is a long-term investment in the work, and not to compete with our partners," OPPO said, and adding that, " As our business becomes more and more diversified and international, we can only cooperate with our partners more and more to create excellent products with both hard and soft services."
"Qualcomm and MediaTek have always been partners that OPPO has paid special attention to. And to do the chip is in fact a long-term preparation of OPPO, so the company will not change the current relationship with partners," OPPO said previously.
