Xiaomi starts company to make chips for smart speakers, among other things

Smartphone maker Xiaomi starts a company to develop chips for IoT devices such as smart speakers. The company called Dayu, which means big fish, coexists with Xiaomi’s company to make smartphone socs.

Xiaomi itself will own 25 percent of Dayu, while the rest will be employees, Technode writes. Some of those employees come from Pinecone, the company that made the Surge S1 soc for Xiaomi. That soc was in the Mi 5c phone. Since then, the company no longer uses Surge-socs in its own smartphones. Xiaomi mainly relies on Qualcomm, an early investor in Xiaomi.

It is unknown what the purpose of the chips is, which should mainly be in devices with artificial intelligence for internet-of-things applications. It is also unknown in which products the chips will end up.

The step to develop chips is obvious, because Xiaomi sees its iot devices next to smartphones as the second major branch of the company. Developing your own chips is a strategy to be less dependent on suppliers who can also be competitors. Competitors in the smartphone market such as Samsung, Apple and Huawei are all developing their own socs for high-end smartphones. It is unknown if Xiaomi will continue with the Surge series of socs.