OPPO Announces $7 Billion R&D Push at INNO DAY 2019

On December 10, OPPO held their INNO DAY 2019 event, promoting their theme of ‘Create Beyond Boundaries’. The event featured OPPO’s new variety of smart devices, including AR glasses, watches, headphones, and 5G CPE. OPPO also showcased their device functionalities such as flash charging, 5G, imaging and software optimization. The company was keen to exalt their growing device ecosystem and ‘intelligent connectivity’.

Over the next three years the company intends to invest nearly $7 billion to augment their overall technological capabilities in hardware, software and systems in addition to frontier technologies like 5G/6G, AI, AR, and big data.

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Keynote speaker at the event, OPPO Founder and CEO Tony Chen, said, “As the adoption of 5G and AI ramp up, intelligent connectivity is increasingly within reach. We believe the concept of connection is just the foundation, whereas the integration and convergence of things will be the future. The concept of intelligent connectivity consists of four key parts, including the convergence of technology and service, the convergence of organization, the convergence of culture and the convergence of technology, arts and humanities.”

Despite OPPOs initial focus on smartphones, Chen also spoke about the company’s ambition to create a smart device ecosystem, “OPPO has been more than just a phone maker from the outset. In fact, smartphones have simply been a gateway for OPPO to deliver a diverse portfolio of technological services. For OPPO and even the entire industry, there won’t be any company solely focusing on smartphones.”

Levin Liu, OPPO Vice President and Head of OPPO Research Institute said in his speech, “As the importance of convergence between technologies and services becomes essential, OPPO is building an integrated technology model that covers five spheres, namely: equipment, data, computing, services and scenarios.”

In conjunction with OPPO’s INNO DAY, the company released a white paper titled, “Intelligent Connectivity: Unleashing Opportunities with the Power of 5G, AI and Cloud.” The paper detailed the emerging trends in intelligent device connectivity, brought about by the 5G era. Reducing latency and increasing connectivity, 5G will be a prominent driver of the smart devices sector more broadly.

OPPO’s intent to create a smart device ecosystem will directly challenge Xiaomi’s dominance in the space. Xiaomi’s AIoT strategy has enabled them to forge ahead in the connected smart home sector. While OPPO previously mainly competed with Xiaomi in smartphones, this new strategic initiative will see the two Chinese companies competing even more directly.

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