Oppo Shuts Down Chip Design Subsidiary, Retiring MariSilicon Chips

Oppo has shuttered its chip design plans, closing its subsidiary called Zeku, citing uncertainties in the smartphone market. The subsidiary was the mind behind Oppo's MariSilicon chips which powered a host of flagship Oppo Phones such as the Find X5.

The report comes courtesy the South China Morning Post, which quoted Oppo with a brief statement that said it was a "difficult decision" putting the blame on "uncertainties in the global economy and smartphone market."

The report said that the employees got less than a day's notice before the chip design unit was shut down.

The development comes amidst a raging chip war between China and the United States, with the latter imposing crippling sanctions preventing China from gaining access to cutting edge chip manufacturing hardware.

Oppo's Chipset Dreams Shuttered Amidst Macroeconomic Headwinds

Oppo set up Zeku in 2019 to design custom chipsets for its smartphones and other devices. The first product out of the house was the MariSilicon X chip, an image signal processor that took care of improving photos and videos in the 2021 Oppo Find X5.

The firm also released a chip for wearables called the MariSilicon Y finding its way to its truly wireless headsets.

Now, the current flagship Oppo Find X6 and the Find X6 Pro feature the MariSilicon X NPU as an addition to the AI Engine in the Snapdragon chipset powering them.

The project was a showcase of Oppo's capabilities in chip design, and was not really a threat to the giants such as MediaTek and Qualcomm. It was part of a larger trend among Chinese companies to design custom chipsets to push more differentiated features on their devices. Vivo too has its own chips while Xiaomi shuttered its chipset plans a few years back and is now making chips for EVs.

Oppo blamed the macroeconomic headwinds the global smartphone market is facing currently, as the world goes through a demand crunch amidst high inflation after the pandemic. They also had to exit key European markets, including France earlier this week, after they lost a patent infringement suit filed by Nokia.