Xiaomi is one of the most successful Chinese smartphone manufacturers at the moment. This Asian company was the most successful Chinese smartphone manufacturer last year, but only as far as the domestic market goes. Huawei trumped Xiaomi overall considering it became world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturing company. That being said, Xiaomi will introduce their long-rumored Mi 5 flagship on February 24th, both in Beijing, and in Barcelona during the Mobile World Congress (MWC).
As we’re waiting for the announcement to happen, a rather interesting new report surfaced. According to a new report from Reuters, Xiaomi will use their very own SoCs by the second half this year. Now, according to Reuters’ source who has a ‘direct knowledge of the matter’, Xiaomi aims to implement their very own SoCs in some entry-level products in the second half of this year. This is actually not the first time we’re hearing about Xiaomi’s very own SoC, the company has been working on this for quite some time now, if rumors are to be believed, of course. Xiaoimi’s ‘Redmi’ devices are expected to be powered by these processors, at least some units from that lineup.
Xiaomi has actually hired 200-300 people to work on SoC design in various cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, according to the source. “Xiaomi is copying the model of designing processor chips in-house from Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd,” said the source. Now, most of you probably don’t know this, but a China-based SoC design company, Leadcore Technology, has actually signed an agreement with Pinecone Electronics to jointly design 4G multiple mode SoCs back in 2014. Now, Pinecone Electronics company might be unknown to the vast majority of you, but do note that this company is actually owned by Xiaomi, which makes things a whole lot more interesting, doesn’t it. Either way, it seems like we’re in for an interesting year as far as mobile processors go. Xiaomi seems to be entering the race, though it will take the company quite some time until they managed to manufacture more powerful processors. Either way, stay tuned, we’ll report back as soon as we hear more about this.