A lot Chinese smartphone makers rely on US companies like Qualcomm to power some of their smartphones.
But with the increasing trade tensions between China and the US, Chinese companies might be forced to develop their own components in case they get entirely banned from doing business with their American partners.
Xiaomi‘s mobile chipsets have been in development for years — but now, the pressure is higher as they may have to give up Qualcomm once everything goes down. The company might only have to rely on Taiwanese semicon company MediaTek — or whatever chipset Xiaomi may come up with — to power future Mi phones.
The company launched its first in-house processor back in 2017, the Surge S1, which powered the Mi 5C. About four years later, we yet to see a follow-up.
But just recently, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun announced on Weibo that their plans on launching a mobile chipset are still ongoing and they will openly provide updates once new developments happen.
Lei Jun’s statement came out just days after Huawei announced that they will stop producing Kirin processors by September 15. The Huawei Mate 40 series are rumored to be the last smartphones to be powered by Kirin. This is just one of the major effects of China’s trade war with the US.
Just recently, China has implemented new tax incentives that will help boost chipset development and manufacturing in the country.
See also: ‘Nanniwan’ project aims to build Huawei products without US technologies
Albeit, it may take years until Chinese brands can come up with a capable processor that can compete with the big names in the industry. Huawei’s HiSilicon business has been making Kirin processors for many years, and only in the last few generations were their performance came close to those of Qualcomm and Apple.
Via: SCMP