Xiaomi’s chipset division shifts focus from smartphones to IoT gadgets

Chinese hardware giant Xiaomi is spinning off a part of its China-based Pinecone chipset division into a new company called Dayu (which translates to ‘big fish’ in Mandarin). It will focus on research and development of AI-based IoT (AIoT) chips for connected gadgets. The remaining part of the Pinecone team will still work on mobile processors within Xiaomi.

This is part of Xiaomi‘s $1.5 billion AIoT initiative , which was announced back in January, and should help it accelerate development of its smart gadgets. Notably, the company’s IoT and lifestyle devices portfolio registered 86.9 percent year-on-year growth for the last financial year. It sells products like smart TVs , Android TV boxes , air purifiers, and robot vacuum cleaners.

Xiaomi started its chipset division back in 2014 as a wholly owned subsidiary named Pinecone. In 2017, the company introduced its first indigenous chipset for smartphones called Surge S1, which was later used in the midrange Mi 5C .

The company‘s chairman and CEO, Lei Jun, said at that time that Xiaomi needed to catch up to big players came to manufacturing processors:

However, it faced a lot of issues while developing its next chipset , and the processor was never formally launched.

The move could help Xiaomi overtake rival brands in this space across Asia, like Huawei and Apple.

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