After four years of making chips, Oppo finally woke up from a dream, and how many regrets were hidden behind its gloomy departure?

Tech 2023-05-15 21:12:56 Source: Network

A thunder on the flat ground! The most perplexing estimate of this weekend is the employees of ZEKU, a subsidiary of OPPO's core manufacturing company. Last night, I notified my home office that there will be a staff meeting at 11am this morning,The 15 minute meeting terminated the company for four years, and all employees lost their jobs at that moment This speed is faster than the Gallic rooster raising the white flag

A thunder on the flat ground! The most perplexing estimate of this weekend is the employees of ZEKU, a subsidiary of OPPO's core manufacturing company. Last night, I notified my home office that there will be a staff meeting at 11am this morning,The 15 minute meeting terminated the company for four years, and all employees lost their jobs at that moment This speed is faster than the Gallic rooster raising the white flag.

On May 12th, OPPO issued a notice stating that,Given the current uncertainty in the global economy and mobile phone market, the company has decided to stop the ZEKU business and end its four-year independent "chip making" journey.

Currently, the OPPO official website displays "404" about MariSilicon

The OPPO decision was quite sudden, which surprised many industry insiders. Because,Zheku's position in the industry is equivalent to the ByteDance of the chip industry, and the fall of the giant is bound to stir up thousands of waves.

Friends circle released by Zhu Shangzu, COO of Zheku, after the announcement of dissolution

Born in 2019, ZEKU made a name for itself, but ended in such a hurry, causing a wave of regret in the entire market. Similar to all tragedies, the perfection at the beginning always hides the desolation behind.Let's review the birth of Zheku's highlight and the departure of his downfall, and explore the compromise behind the fall of a giant.

HR and headhunters from various companies post recruitment information in the Zheku group

In 2019, China's largest chip design company, Huawei's subsidiary Hisense Semiconductor, was included in the sanctions list, causing industry anxiety. Faced with the potential for "bottleneck" and high-end issues, OPPO officially established Zheku Technology and began to form its chip team.

Chen Yongming is one of the disciples of the hidden leader Duan Yongping in the technology industry

OPPO founder and CEO Chen Mingyong is full of ambition, announcing that he will invest 50 billion yuan in the next three years to explore cutting-edge and deep-water technologies. At that time, there was a lot of praise from the outside world,Praising its courage to step into the "deep water zone" of research and innovation, building the most core underlying hardware technology.And dare to gnaw down the hard bones of chip manufacturing at this time point.

But few people know that OPPO has already had a layout in this game.As early as 16 years ago, OPPO invested in a chip company called Xiongli Technology; A year later, OPPO established Shanghai Jinsheng Communication, which is not only geographically advantageous but also located around the office of MediaTek; In 2018, Jinsheng Communication expanded its business scope to "integrated circuit design and services".

Even before the dissolution, they were still digging people

Not only has there been some accumulation in the early stage, but after the company's framework was built, Zheku can be said to have started a crazy cash ability mode, willing to spend huge amounts of money to lure elites from all walks of life to join.For a while, the human resources departments of famous chip companies such as Qualcomm, Huawei Hisense, and Uni Light Zhanrui were under great pressure.

In the chip industry, which requires extremely high talent density, Zheku has established a team of nearly 3000 people in just a few years, quickly entering the industry's first camp.

Oppo school recruitment poster

What's even more amazing is that,Nearly 80% of the master's and doctoral employees in this lineup graduated from top universities at home and abroad, and the proportion of engineers with over 5 years of experience in the chip industry is even closer to 80%.

This advantage has also led to a higher improvement in OPPO's product strength in the coming years. In years 21 and 22,OPPO has applied for 6789 and 5765 invention patents in the domestic communication industry, second only to Huawei.

In 20 years, OPPO published an article titled 'Some Reflections on Building Core Technologies',It revealed three major layout plans that made the industry tremble: software development, cloud platform construction, and the implementation of the "Mariana Plan" for self-developed chips.

The name comes from the deepest trench in the world. By using this name, it fully reflects thisThe difficulty and difficulty of the projectSecondly, it is sufficient to indicate that OPPO wants toSelf developed chip field to achieve its own depth in the field of wild chips

OPPO press conference

In December 2021, after more than a year of recruitment and diligent research and development, OPPO finally launched its first self-developed chip:MariSiliconX

OPPO's self-developed chip this time started with NPU (neural network processor) and was manufactured using TSMC's advanced 6nm process technology.And achieve the implementation of "dedicated chip dedicated," in this architecture, the chip's AI computing power can reach up to 18TOPS, slightly higher than the 15.8TOPS data of Apple A15 chips during the same period.

AI MariSiliconXBetter HDR mode, lossless RAW calculation, and RGBWPro mode to maximize sensor capability

Oppo's findX5 has also become the first equipped model

The chip integrates OPPO's self-developed MariLumi The image processing unit supports a processing bit width of up to 20bit and also supports 20bit UltraHDR - which is four times the HDR capability of the flagship platform during the same period.

Known as hot forging iron, in December last year, at the OPPO Future Technology Conference, OPPO launched its second self-developed chipMariana Y, this is also OPPO's first SoC chip solution.

As the first Bluetooth audio SoC to integrate an NPU unit, this is OPPO's first challenge in RF chip design,This means that its self-developed chip has taken a solid first step in the field of wireless connectivity.

Everything seems to be going smoothly, and even at the beginning of the year, there were rumors that OPPO was developing an application processor for smartphones, with plans for mass production in the third quarter of 2023 using TSMC's 4nm technology.Just as everything was developing towards prosperity, a single announcement suddenly brought everything to a halt.

Netizens draw pictures to mock the models of self-developed chips from various manufacturers

So why did a star who was about to reach its peak turn into a meteor like falling to the ground? There was no sign even before the fall. I think itsThe fundamental reason is that money is no longer worth burning, people are no longer worth using, and even the landlord's family has no surplus food in the face of an uncertain future.

Last year, due to well-known reasons,The consumer electronics industry has been continuously sluggish due to the combined impact of the global macroeconomic situation, and domestic mobile phone companies are also facing serious operational pressure.

The data released by the authoritative market research company Canalys further reveals the seriousness of this situation: in the first quarter of this year, domestic mobile phone sales reached 67.6 million units, which is already the lowest level since 2013.

Some institutions predict that,The recovery of the entire industry is expected to take at least two years. As a result, OPPO's sales have become deeply mired in difficulties.According to IDC, OPPO's shipment volume fell by 28.2% year-on-year in 2022, becoming the brand with the highest decline among the top five in China's shipment volume.

In addition, after experiencing the impact of masks in recent years, many people have awakened from the trap of consumerism,Starting to pursue rational consumption, many things can be used for a few more years, and mobile phones are no exception.

Whether it's domestic phones or iPhones, theirThe functional updates and upgrades seem to have reached a standstill and have not brought much surprise Even worse,The phenomenon of homogenization is becoming increasingly serious.Especially in the Android market, either playing the edge game to pursue photography technology, or steadily betting on fast charging and other experience optimizations.

last,Almost all manufacturers compete around price, and users' desire to switch machines has not been effectively stimulated as a result.And this directly affects the cash flow on the manufacturer's books,Where does chip research and development come from without cash flow support?

Except for Huawei and Apple, they are all tightening their belts to make ends meet

Except for financial difficulties in long-term maintenance. The shortage of chip talents is also a very serious problem.The recently released "2023 China Developer Survey Report" by CSDN further proves this reality: only 6% of developers have the ability to deeply understand chip development technology and apply it.

Nowadays, excellent chip design talents not only need to master knowledge of chip architecture, but also should be proficient in software, such as operating systems and other software stacks. However, many integrated circuit colleges do not offer software courses related to chips.

To solve this problem,We need to change our current talent cultivation philosophy and strategy, focusing on cultivating hardware software collaboration capabilities. But the existing system cannot yet support such a large scale of personnel supply that the industry needs.

According to industry data, the size of the Zheku is estimated to be about 3000 people, and the annual labor cost can reach up to 3 billion yuan. This is equivalent to an annual salary of approximately one million yuan per employee.

Duan Yongping commented on the OPPO incident

In the short term, even if all teams are composed of industry elites, they can only make limited achievements.In the industry of burning money, raising people who burn money, even if they have the OPPO father of the wealthy generation, the career that the wealthy second generation wants to do is not a few small goals that can be easily achieved.

Recently, multiple netizens who have been certified as OPPO employees have revealed that the fixed salary system for OPPO year-end bonuses has been discounted. Due to the significant difference between the bonus paid and the originally agreed amount, some employees may even initiate rights protection against this year-end bonus discount event.Long pain is better than short pain. Now is not the time to save face

The US Chip Act

Additionally,The topic of self-developed chips is particularly sensitive in the context of tense relations between China and the United States. The magic box opened by geopolitics poses the biggest challenge for Chinese companies in chip manufacturing.

There are rumors that OPPO may become the next Chinese technology enterprise targeted by the United States Department of Commerce. Compared to Huawei, OPPO lacks resources and strength to address the challenges posed by sanctions.

OPPO's main source of revenue is through the sale of mobile phones, so if its chips are cut off, it will suffer a devastating blow.

Starting from the second half of 2022, technology companies and semiconductor companies began global layoffs, while major American companies began to substantially decouple.Starting from this, Chinese semiconductor companies have ushered in a new wave of bankruptcy.

According to Tianyancha, over 5700 chip companies in China were revoked or cancelled in 2022, an increase of 70% compared to 2021. As is well known, the chip industry relies heavily on upstream and downstream supply chains,When Oppo loses these supply chains, no one can guarantee how long the chip industry can support it.

At the Zheku layoff meeting, executives shed tears several times

In the current market environment,OPPO must have the courage to 'break a strong man's wrist'. OPPO is like a merchant ship encountering headwinds, which must abandon some of its "payload" to improve flexibility before continuing forward.This not only ensures that the company can overcome difficulties more comfortably during special periods, but also lays a more solid foundation for future development.

In "Kua Fu Chases the Sun", it is written that after Kua Fu falls, he becomes a big mountain, and even his cane becomes a large peach forest.Similarly, the fall of the giant Zheku also left a spark for GuoxinThe chip research and development team has thousands of people, many of whom are from Huawei Hisense and Ziguang Zhanrui.

After dissolution, not only will employees receive N+3 compensation (years of service+average monthly salary), which is higher than the average level of large domestic factories. At the same time, the OPPO human resources department issued an internal letter to fresh students who had not yet registered.

In addition, other manufacturers continue to adhere to this path.For example, it has been reported online that Dajiang has opened a dedicated channel for ZEKU employees to recruit employees who have graduated from ZEKU. Xiaomi has also taken action, with some Xiaomi employees starting to be responsible for the recruitment of similar positions in ZEKU.

Zheku CEO Liu Jun

Zheku CEO Liu JunSince ancient times, there has been a lot of emotions and empty regrets, and the origin of good dreams is the easiest to wake up

The autonomy of "China Semiconductor" is imperative, and the rise of Chinese semiconductors is destined to be a difficult path to take.The market is constantly changing, but Mariana's determination should not be just a dream. Perhaps one day in the future, Chen Mingyong will bring the courage of his disciples to restart the "core" matter.All obstacles are long, and we still need more Yugong.

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