On May 27, at the Xiaomi Group's performance meeting, Xiaomi Group President Lu Weibing responded to the recent controversial topics about the self-developed flagship SoC Xuanjie O1, and made it clear that Xiaomi will develop its own 5G baseband chip.
Previously, Xiaomi officially released the first 3nm flagship SoC chip in China, Xuanjie O1, at the strategic new product launch conference on May 22, making Xiaomi the fourth in the world and the second in China to have a self-developed flagship mobile phone SoC chip after Apple, Samsung, and Huawei. However, a press release released by Arm's official website later used the word "Custom Silicon" (literally translated as "custom chip"), which made many people believe that Xiaomi Xuanjie O1 was customized for Xiaomi by Arm using its CSS platform. Subsequently, the news brought huge negative impact to Xiaomi on the Internet.
Although Zhu Dan, vice president of Xiaomi Group and head of Xuanjie, denied this later. Arm also re-posted that "Xuanjie O1 was built by Xiaomi's Xuanjie chip team." Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun also posted a Weibo to deny that Xuanjie O1 is a customized chip of Arm, and said that Arm CSS service was not used in the development process. But even so, there are still many netizens on the Internet who do not believe it.
Lu Weibing also admitted at the performance meeting that "it is not easy to make chips. In the past few days, some self-media and water army are not very friendly to the public opinion environment. It is not very healthy for the development of China's chip industry. I hope everyone will give us more support and encouragement."
Regarding the future planning of the self-developed Xuanjie chip, Lu Weibing said that in the future, it is only planned to be used in flagship mobile phones or other flagship products, and there is no plan to use it in other products.
Lu Weibing also further pointed out: "Any consumer electronics giant is ultimately a chip giant. Like Apple, Samsung and Tesla, only by mastering the ability of underlying chips can they achieve long-term differentiated product experience and truly form a moat."
However, as to whether Xuanjie chips will replace chips from external suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek in the future, Lu Weibing clearly stated that he will adhere to the self-developed route in the future, but will also coexist with Qualcomm and MediaTek for a long time. He said that this is not closed, but a "global strategy" of inclusiveness.
It is worth noting that Xiaomi also launched its first 4G watch chip Xuanjie T1 at the previous press conference, achieving a breakthrough in self-developed 4G baseband chips, which uses self-developed 4G baseband + RF link. This has also triggered speculation from the outside world that Xiaomi will develop its own 5G baseband chips in the future.
In response, Lu Weibing also clearly responded that Xiaomi will also do research and development of 5G baseband chips, and finally integrate 4G and 5G together and use them more on mobile phones.
"The chip is a platform capability. Don't look at the chip as a simple product. When our chip becomes a platform capability, we can broaden the product line and further cooperate with Xiaomi's Pengpai operating system and AI to form a differentiated product experience. This is what we have been thinking about or doing for a long time. I think it will take some time for us to achieve our goal. I hope everyone will be more patient with our chip business." Lu Weibing concluded.