Xiaomi's not giving up on the idea of custom smartphone chips

Apple Silicon is more lucrative than ever, Samsung is gearing up to launch a powerful new Exynos chipset, and Google is readying an in-house SoC for the flagship Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.

Soon, these three companies could face tough competition from fellow smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi.

Xiaomi could take on Apple and Qualcomm with an in-house chipset

Xiaomi has started license negotiations with intellectual property (IP) providers, per a new report (via GizmoChina), and is already in the process of hiring a team of people that’d lead future in-house chipset development.

A person familiar with the matter says that Xiaomi’s end goal is to make smartphone chipsets. However, the brand hopes to start with an in-house chipset for accessories, presumably because smartphone chipsets are more complex.

This won’t be Xiaomi’s first attempt at in-house chipsets, though. This March the company introduced an custom Surge C1 image signal process (ISP) for the foldable Mi Mix Fold and back in 2017 it unveiled the Surge S1 chipset that powered the budget Xiaomi Mi 5c.

It’ll be interesting to see what the outcome of Xiaomi’s latest efforts are. But if the company does push ahead with an in-house smartphone chipset, it’ll face more competition than ever when released.

In addition to the upcoming Apple, Samsung and Google chips, Xiaomi will face competition from current supplier Qualcomm and potentially Oppo, who is understood to be developing a custom chipset alongside sister brands OnePlus and Realme.