Oppo has announced the closure of its Shanghai-based chip subsidiary, Zeku, citing concerns over the unpredictable global economy and the smartphone industry.
Zeku played a significant role in designing the MariSilicon series of chips, encompassing the MariSilicon X ISP and MariSilicon Y audio chip. These two were mainly used in Oppo’s high-end phones like the Find X series, Reno phones, the Find N2 Flip, and others.
In 2019, Oppo ventured into the chip-making business, successfully creating a range of in-house co-processors, ISPs, modems, power management chips, and audio chips. Speculations suggest that Oppo made a substantial investment of over $1.4 billion in its chipset development venture.
There were also rumors that Oppo is working on making its own SoCs similar to Samsung, Google, and Apple, which would be ready in a few years, but now it appears that those will never see the light of day.
Recent Find X phones stopped using Oppo’s custom chips, meaning the company likely had this planned for a while and saw this coming.
Going forward, we can expect Oppo phones to resort to Qualcomm’s standard chips used on their Snapdragon SoCs such as the ISP, NPU, and other hardware.
