“Chip is the peak we need to climb and the uphill battle we cannot avoid if we want to become a big hard technology company,” said Xiaomi billionaire co-founder Lei Jun. The Chinese company plans to unveil its first home-grown processor, the Xring O1, on May 22, Lei added.
According to Lei, in 2021, the Beijing-based smartphone and electric car manufacturer decided on a ten-year initiative to create the Xring mobile chip.
Xiaomi has spent more than 13.5 billion yuan in the past four-plus years and plans to invest 6 billion yuan in research and development this year, Lei added. Xiaomi's semiconductor team now has more than 2,500 people, Lei wrote.
Until now, Xiaomi has depended on Qualcomm Inc. and MediaTek Inc. for mobile processor production, but now the Chinese company appears to be adopting the approach of Apple Inc., one of its biggest competitors in China.
Apple develops its own chips in sync with software to create a complementary system. The American company recently extended this scheme to its Mac computers to optimize the efficiency of its gadgets.
The new 3nm processor could give Xiaomi a domestic market advantage over Huawei Technologies Co., which cannot provide mobile chips more advanced than 7nm due to issues with manufacturing partner SMIC.
Source: Bloomberg
