According to Nikkei Asia, OPPO is working on its own high-end soc that should appear in future premium smartphones. The company would like to use TSMC’s 3nm processes for this. These smartphones with OPPO socs could appear in 2023 at the earliest.
Nikkei Asia sources say OPPO wants the chips to be able to compete with other companies developing socs, such as Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm. With the socs, OPPO wants to be able to keep more control over the smartphone components and also be less dependent on foreign companies. This desire for reduced dependency is probably partly related to the current chip shortages. The rumors about OPPO’s own soc have been around since February last year.
To develop its own socs, OPPO has hired former chip developers and AI experts from MediaTek, Qualcomm and Huawei. The company is also looking for employees in the United States, Taiwan and Japan. In addition to its own soc, OPPO would also like to develop its own image signal processor for smartphone cameras. Several smartphone manufacturers are developing their own image processors, as customers increasingly base their purchase on advanced photo and video functions. ISPs are also easier to develop than SOCs.
Apple and Samsung have been releasing smartphones with their own socs for years. Google will also focus more on this from this year, with the Pixel 6 phones and its own Tensor soc. Xiaomi also showed its own SOC in 2017, but has since focused on developing ISPs.