SHANGHAI Reuters - Chinese phone maker Oppo unveiled a new self-developed chip, as the hardware company moves further into the semiconductor sector.
The chip, called MariSilicon X, is a neural processing unit that improves images for video and photography taken on smartphones.
It will be manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd 6 nanometre process technology and will be placed in the company's upcoming Find X series of smartphones set to hit the market in early 2022.
According to Canalys, Oppo is one of China's top phone brands, which occupy 21% of the domestic market as of the third quarter of 2021.
The company is owned by BBK Electronics, which also owns Vivo, another top-selling Chinese smartphone brand. The two companies compete for customers, but they have an overlapping supply chain.
Both firms are investing heavily in the chip sector. Oppo has also developed a power management chip that it uses for some of its chargers, in addition to MariSilicon X.
In September, Vivo announced it had developed an image signal processor chip that it will use in its phones.
The chip efforts dovetail with a government push for Chinese companies to boost the country's domestic chip sector, which for decades has lagged behind that of the United States and other East Asian economies.
The need for a self-sufficient chip industry came to an end last year when U.S. sanctions against Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co Ltd prevented the company from sourcing key components.
The measures crippled the company's smartphone division as well as its in-house chip division, HiSilicon, the only Chinese unit developing smartphone processors that could rival those of Qualcomm Inc.
Governments and companies around the world have been trying to boost semiconductor production https: www.reuters. com breakingviews chip-investment boom-is just-getting -- started in 2021 -- 09 -- 08 after a global shortage hit manufacturing in the wake of the COVID 19 crisis.