OPPO pushes the envelope with the release of new chip, Air glasses and foldable phones

SHINE | 18-Dec-2021 | By Zhu Shenshen

The smartphone brand OPPO, with the debut of its first AI chip, will invest heavily in chip development with a team of “several dozen hundred” engineers in the future, the company said on Wednesday. OPPO released an NPU, or Neural network Processing Unit, augmented reality glasses and its first foldable smartphone Find N to demonstrate its latest business expansion.

During the OPPO INNO DAY 2021, OPPO released its first self-developed NPU chip, called MariSilicon X, which can improve photography and video using AI calculations. Chip development is tough because of technical challenges and huge investment. “But OPPO is ready to explore this path with a decade-long blueprint and a team of several dozen hundred engineers,” said Chen Mingyong, founder and chief executive of OPPO.

Currently, Apple, Huawei and Samsung all have their own chips. Firms like Xiaomi, Vivo, and OPPO are allocating more resources into chips and key technologies. The new NPU chip, using 6-nanometer technology, will be adopted in OPPO’s flagship line of products, Find X, to be released in the first quarter of 2022. Also on Wednesday, OPPO released a new generation of product, Air Glasses, making the smart glasses a useful tool and not just a toy.

The new foldable Find N costs from 7,699 yuan (US$1,212), compared with Huawei and Samsung’s foldable models of over 10,000 yuan. Chinese smartphone firms have rich tech reserves of chips. According to the patent consulting firm PatSnap, OPPO has 1,700 patents for chips including 420 invention patents, covering fingerprint recognition, displays and camera technology. Vivo also has 710 chip patents including 130 patents for special inventions. The high-end Android market has seen fiercer competition in China since Huawei was phased out of the top position, analysts said.

Smartphone brands are investing in unique features like chips, operating systems and eye-catching gadgets.