HONOR could start making its own SoCs, new company established

HONOR has registered a new company in China, as it seemingly wants to make SoCs of its own. The timing of this is also quite interesting. Some of you may know that OPPO ditched its SoC efforts last month, and laid off 3,000 people.

HONOR has a new company which will seemingly make SoCs down the line

We’re not sure if HONOR grabbed some of those employees, but the answer is… almost certainly. The sheer timing of this announcement is quite interesting. In any case, the company’s subsidiary is named Shanghai Honor Intelligent Technology Development Co.

That company was officially founded last Wednesday in Shanghai’s coastal Lingang Free Trade Zone. It has a registered capital of 100 million yuan, which translates to $14 million dollars. The company is owned by Honor Terminal Co in its entirety.

This company will aim at chip design, sales and related services. On top of that, it’ll also aim at the development of artificial intelligence (AI) application software, at least based on public information.

This company will become one of HONOR’s five research centers in China

HONOR said, in its official statement, that this company will become one of HONOR’s five research centers in China. It’ll focus on research and development of core software, graphics algorithms, communications, and photography.

So, it seems like this will be a rather versatile company. What is interesting, HONOR did not mention chip development in its official statement, but when we take everything into consideration, that’s easily possible.

HONOR, as many of you know, was once owned by Huawei. The company does have a lot of experience at this point, and they’ve been releasing some compelling devices since the split. HONOR is also quite active outside of China.

Xiaomi reaffirmed its commitment to chip development when OPPO’s news landed, and now a new player seems to have joined the fold. That’s always great to see, as we need more competition in the SoC market too. Only time will tell how focused this company will be on making processors, though. That’s not an easy task, that’s for sure.