OPPO announces the termination of its chip subsidiary ZEKU's business. How should Chinese mobile phone manufacturers develop self-developed chips?

On May 18, OPPO announced the termination of its chip subsidiary ZEKU’s business. This decision caused widespread shock in the mobile phone industry. This issue has triggered discussions in the industry about whether Chinese mobile phone manufacturers need to develop their own chips, leading to a lot of speculation.

According to ITBEAR technology information, after the launch of self-developed chips, OPPO released two self-developed chips, Mariana MariSilicon X and Y. Among them, MariSilicon X has been commercialized and used in OPPO mobile phones, and although MariSilicon Y has been released, it has not seen large-scale practical application so far.

However, according to relatively objective evaluations, MariSilicon X has a negative impact on the phone’s heating and power consumption, and does not bring a better user experience. In addition, MariSilicon X exists as a plug-in chip and requires coordination and debugging between different chips. Improper handling may lead to performance degradation.

From the perspective of installation volume and user experience, MariSilicon X does not bring high-value increments to OPPO products, nor does it demonstrate uniqueness and irreplaceability.

In fact, OPPO is not the only Chinese mobile phone manufacturer trying to develop its own chips. Xiaomi and vivo have independently developed chips in the past, but they did not attract enough attention from the market and users, nor did they achieve significant user experience improvement and sales growth.

The founder said that not all mobile phone manufacturers are suitable for independent research and development of chips. Research and development of chips requires huge investment and long-term return cycle, and also faces the risk of sanctions from non-market factors. He suggested that domestic mobile phone manufacturers should weigh rationally when considering self-developed chips.

Independent telecommunications analysts believe that the chip research and development field requires heavy investment, long cycle, and high risks. This is a common problem faced by domestic chip research and development companies. For people like OPPO Large-scale investment and diversified companies like ZEKU are more risky.

Zhang Guobin said that self-developed chips are a challenging task for mobile phone manufacturers. To gain differentiation and improve competitiveness, you must have sufficient scale, excellent hardware design, and proprietary patented technology. In addition, there may also be risks of patent barriers and suppression. He suggested that mobile phone manufacturers should fully consider the risk costs when deciding to develop their own chips, start with small chips, and gradually move into more complex system-level chips after accumulating experience.

In general, the significance of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers’ self-developed chips is to reduce costs and improve efficiency. At present, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have not yet implemented self-developed chips to reduce costs and improve efficiency on a large scale. They lack confidence and still rely on third-party suppliers to provide core components. The core purpose of self-developed chips should be to reduce costs rather than pursue a technological moat. Therefore, OPPO's termination of self-developed chips is not necessarily a bad thing for the Chinese mobile phone industry and manufacturers. They should focus on their areas of expertise such as mobile phone design and optimization, and develop and survive solidly.

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