Xiaomi has released a ton of devices this year, and this China-based company has also become an MVNO. Xiaomi tends to dabble in pretty much everything as far as tech is concerned, they’ve released smartphones, tablets, fitness trackers, smart TVs, an air purifier, a smart scale, etc. Well, according to a number of rumors we’ve seen this year, the company is also planning to announce their very own mobile processors. We don’t really have all that much detail about this, but MediaTek did mention Xiaomi and their chips quite recently, so let’s see what’s that all about.
MediaTek is one of the largest manufacturers of mobile processors in the world, and their COO had something interesting to say in the latest interview. MedaiTek’s COO said that the expenses of developing in-house chips are very high, and that the business itself isn’t all that profitable, at least not to the extent people think it is. He has also added that he’s not worried about companies like Xiaomi because of it, he doesn’t exactly see them as a threat. Samsung and MediaTek have been battling with in-house chips for 10 years before they actually succeeded, and according to MediaTek’s COO, Xiaomi will still have to rely on other OEMs like Qualcomm, for example.
Xiaomi still hasn’t confirmed that they’re working on in-house chips, but considering the number of rumors we’ve seen, that’s definitely a possibility. Xiaomi will face tough competition though, and it will take them quite a while to manufacture a truly capable chip, they can’t exactly do that overnight. Samsung and Huawei are the only SoC manufacturers which are manufacturing smartphones at the same time, and LG might join them really soon. As you probably already know, LG’s first-gen Nuclun chip didn’t really make it, and the company had to start from scratch. We did see some rumors saying that the Nuclun 2 is right around the corner.
Next year will be rally interesting when it comes to mobile processors, Snapdragon 820, Exynos 8890 and MediaTek Helio X20 are right around the corner, while Huawei has already released the Kirin 950. All of these SoC are extremely powerful, and it will be interesting to see what happens in 2016.