How Chinese smartphone brand Oppo plans to take on Apple, Samsung at high end of the market

Oppo, the world’s No 4 smartphone vendor, will rely on its Find series to spearhead a push into the lucrative premium sector dominated by Apple and Samsung

Oppo’s ambitions for high-end handsets got an extra lift after its merger with OnePlus, the Chinese smartphone brand popular with geeks in the West

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Oppo’s latest flagship Find X5 models feature its self-developed image processor MariSilicon X. Photo: Handout

Published: 7:00pm, 24 Feb 2022Updated: 8:58am, 25 Feb 2022

Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is betting heavily on the overseas high-end handset market in 2022, with new models featuring a self-developed image processor, the executive in charge of the brand’s overseas sales said this week.

Oppo, the world’s fourth largest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, will rely on its Find series to spearhead a push into the lucrative premium sector, Zhang Zhouchuan, vice-president of overseas sales and service at Oppo, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

“The growth last year exceeded our expectations … so this year we are aiming higher,” Zhang said. He added that the company expects sales of its high-end models, including the Find and OnePlus series, to double year on year in 2022, after sales of the flagship Find series surged 140 per cent globally last year.

The Shenzhen-based company launched its flagship Find X5 models on Thursday, featuring the self-developed image processor MariSilicon X, which was unveiled in December last year. The new chip was designed to boost camera capabilities and improve video performance in dark environments. The core processor used in the new smartphone is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.

The company has not announced pricing for its Find X5 series. But if costs are on par with, or higher than, the Find X3 series - which range from 4,999 yuan (US$790) to 6,999 yuan - the new models would be one of the priciest ever produced by Oppo, pitting it against Apple’s latest iPhone 13 line and Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S22 series.

Zhang said the in-house chip could be used in other Oppo models in the near future, and that the company was designing other chips dedicated to boosting certain capabilities such as flash charging.

“We are definitely working on developing more integrated circuits internally, but the principle is to [work on ICs that] serve our current capabilities and the core demands of our consumers,” Zhang said. “But we won’t put extra resources into [ICs] that are already sufficient to meet user demand.”