Recently, according to the China quarterly mobile phone market tracking report released by IDC, the top 5 smartphone manufacturers in terms of shipments in the second quarter of 2021 are Vivo, OPPO, and Xiaomi., AppleAnd Honor, its market shares were 23.8%, 21.1%, 17.2%, 10.9% and 8.9%.
As the mobile phone business continues to rise, OPPO has taken another step forward on the road to “building a car.” On August 26, according to media reports, OPPO strategically led Jiekai Technology’s 100 million yuan angel round of financing. The latter currently has a number of automotive electronic chip products in mass production, which means that OPPO has invested in an automotive industry chain.
Although OPPO has not yet officially announced the building of a car, it has already begun to lay out frequently in automotive-related fields. From auto-related patents, founders leading a team to investigate the auto industry, team recruitment, auto project cooperation, investment in auto-related companies… OPPO’s car-making ambitions have emerged.
As of May this year, according to Tianyan Check, OPPO has submitted more than 60 automotive patent applications, including “methods, devices, onboard equipment and storage media for collision avoidance reminders”, “autonomous driving methods, devices and vehicles for vehicles”, “Internet of Vehicles Communication Equipment and Other Methods”, etc.
In fact, OPPO’s earliest patents on automobiles can be traced back to 2016, and most of the patent publications are concentrated in 2018 and 2019.
This means that OPPO’s investment in cars far predates the attention of the outside world.
In 2019, OPPO founder Chen Mingyong said at the OPPO Future Technology Conference that if automakers can’t build cars, OPPO will try to build cars if they have the strength.
Until this year, OPPO’s “Car Building Project” has become more and more frequent.
Fact Check on OPPO’s Autonomous Car Plans
On April 28, there were media reports that the OPPO Group was preparing for car manufacturing. The promoter of OPPO’s car-building plan is the founder, Chen Mingyong. Currently, Chen Mingyong has found out and investigated the resources and talents of the industry chain.
According to sources, Chen Mingyong met with Zhu Wei, president of the China Passenger Car Division of CATL, and the two parties had a chat for several hours. In addition, Chen Mingyong also led a team to visit China Automotive Research Institute and other institutions.
Immediately after June, OPPO applied for the registration of a new trademark “Ocar”, which was internationally classified as a scientific instrument. External interpretations believe that this may mean that OPPO will fully launch the automotive business.
On August 5, OPPO and SAIC Group formally signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The two parties will jointly explore the research and application of “SOA application services, ecological domain integration, vehicle-machine interconnection” and other fields to create a shared future smart car ecosystem.
In addition to intensive automotive cooperation projects, OPPO is also quietly forming an “automotive team.”
From the OPPO official website, OPPO has opened positions such as vehicle system experts and autonomous driving perception fusion experts since June this year.
According to IDC’s quarterly tracking report on China’s wearable device market for the fourth quarter of 2020, although OPPO is ranked fourth with 1.388 million units shipped and 4.6% of the market share, the top three markets are Huawei, Xiaomi, and Apple. The share is around 20%.
Regardless of whether OPPO builds cars, it only develops patents to provide technology for car companies, or cooperates with car companies to build a car-machine interconnected ecology, it is an important part of its creation of the ecological chain, and we look forward to OPPO’s final official answer.
