Massive investments from Xiaomi hint at the second generation of its own smartphone processor

In recent years, Xiaomi has become one of the biggest mobile phone manufacturers in the world. This positioning and recent investments suggest that the company could move towards the production of its own processors, similarly to Huawei or Samsung.

There were already attempts here

A few years ago, Xiaomi fully moved into this segment as well and hit the market with its own processor Xiaomi Surge S1. It was introduced in the Xiaomi Mi 5C smartphone in 2017, but it did not achieve the expected success. Surge S1 is a 64-bit processor with eight Cortex-A53 cores, with a maximum performance of up to 2.2 GHz.

Since then, no new information about Xiaomi processor development has appeared—except for half of last year, in 2019. Back then, the company became one of the biggest shareholders of VeriSilicon, which specializes in developing processors and chips in general.

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More investments didn’t take long to come, and Xiaomi soon became the third-largest shareholder in Beijing’s Angrui Microelectronics Technology Co., another company that, just like VeriSilicon, focuses on developing processors and chips.

In addition, Xiaomi invested more than 310 million yuan, roughly 40 million euros / 1 billion CZK into Onray Microelectronics, making it also a shareholder in Suzhou Sutong Semiconductor Technology Co., which has a similar technological focus.

Investments could indicate the development of a second processor generation

These major investments, as well as Xiaomi’s presence in these companies, may signal the company’s efforts to prepare a new generation of processors. Huawei achieved some success with its Kirin chips, and Samsung with Exynos as well. We can therefore assume Xiaomi might also prepare a very similar plan.

However, no official information has been confirmed. If the company did start producing a new processor, it would probably initially be only mid-range chipsets, positioned among cheaper smartphones. Time will tell what led the company to these major investments and whether any new processor will be more successful than the first attempt.

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