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OPPO was planning on making its own mobile processors, but that won’t happen after all. The company confirmed that it’s working on its custom SoCs way back in 2020, and earlier this year it was reported that the very first product is coming in 2024.
OPPO won’t be making its own processors after all
Why did OPPO decide to make such a drastic move, after years of working on its processors? Well, the reason OPPO shared with the public is… due to the global economy and market uncertainty.
This may not seem like a big deal, but the competition in the market is always good. The more competitors we have, the better it is for the industry as a whole. They push each other to do better, and thus provide us with better products. More competition also brings the prices down.
So, it’s a shame this won’t happen. OPPO has been doing a great job overall for years. Its own NPU turned out to be immensely capable, and so did the MariSilicon Y Bluetooth chip that the company made.
Just to be clear, OPPO is shutting down its ZEKU chip unit, which made MariSilicon chips. So that not only means that we won’t get a proper mobile SoC, but OPPO won’t be making MariSilicon hardware in general anymore. Any products in the pipeline that are meant to use MariSilicon hardware will still use it, though.
Revining this project in the future is not out of the question
It would surely be interesting to see what OPPO can do with a mobile processor. That won’t happen, though, at least not for now. Nothing is stopping OPPO from reviving this project at some point in the future.
The company will focus on some other aspects of the business following this. The aspects that made it so popular in the first place. The company did not elaborate on that, but the smartphone business has been doing great for OPPO.
The company is flying high in China, and some other markets, and it’s constantly expanding. Its foldable smartphones have become quite popular, even though only one launched outside of China, earlier this year.
The OPPO Find N2 Flip launched globally, while its sibling is highly-regarded outside of China, even though it did not launch anywhere else, at least not for now. We’re sure OPPO has interesting plans for the future, despite the news regarding its mobile processors.