Xiaomi is now negotiating with relevant IP providers for authorization and has begun recruiting teams outside.
A person familiar with the matter said that Xiaomi's ultimate goal is definitely to make mobile phone chips, but the company's first chips may be peripheral chips.
Xiaomi first entered the track back in 2017 – that year, on February 28, the firm held a special press conference in Beijing, introducing Surging S1, the company's first chip, an eight-core 64-bit processor, clocked at 2.2GHz, quad-core Mali T860 graphics processor, 32-bit high-performance voice DSP and VoLTE support.
When talking about the reason for self-developed chips at the press conference, Lei Jun said, "chips form the commanding heights of mobile phone technology, if Xiaomi wants to become an industry leader, it must master core technologies." He also emphasized at the meeting that it is estimated that more than one billion USD will be invested in the matter of chips and it will take ten years to produce results.
Although Lei Jun was complacent at the time, the performance of the Surging S1 was not outstanding, coupled with the average sales of C5, the Surging S2 was delayed several times and the market has also repeatedly reported unfavorable news about Xiaomi's mobile phone chips.
As everyone knows, as Huawei's growth is slowing down due to reasons related to the US ban, domestic mobile phone manufacturers including Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo have repeatedly set their eyes on grabbing the gap in the market share.
According to Counterpoint data, in February this year, Xiaomi Group's global mobile phone market share reached 13%, becoming China's largest mobile phone manufacturer. According to the Q1 2021 Global Smartphone Market Report released by Strategy Analytics, the third-ranked Xiaomi shipped 49 million units, an increase of 80% year-on-year, and this share is ahead of all the top five mobile phone manufacturers.