Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, and ZTE to Develop Own Chipsets, Inspired by Huawei’s Success

With the revival of the Kirin, Huawei has effectively paved the way for other Chinese companies to follow suit. Looking at the encouraging sales numbers for the Mate 60 Pro in China, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and ZTE are apparently looking to develop their own in-house chipsets.

Earlier this year, Oppo shut down it’s MariSilicon chip design unit, after which companies like Xiaomi re-affirmed it’s users that they are indeed committed to developing their own chips in the future. In 2017, the Surge S1 was released, Xiaomi’s first in-house SoC, built on a 28nm process node – surprising to think how far we’ve come.

Vivo itself isn’t new to the chip business. Just last year, it released it’s second in-house imaging chip, the V1+ in collaboration with MediaTek.

For the moment however, we’ll most likely see flagship Qualcomm and MediaTek chipsets on most of these companies’ phones. Manufacturing competitive mobile APs, with a lack of modern semiconductor equipment, will sure be a challenge for China.

The Mate 60 Pro, that inspired this change, seems to be on it’s way to become one of the bestselling Huawei devices in recent times, with larger forecasts, reaching an upward of 6 million projected sales this year.

All in all, the chip wars is growing fierce, and while the Kirin 9000S may not have a lot to do with the US trade restrictions, simply because a new chip today might not mean it was manufactured less than a year ago (when Biden strictened semiconductor trade controls, specifically for China).

This is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.