Xiaomi Not Abandoning Surge Chipsets, To Invest Over 10 bln yuan in R&D in 2020

Xiaomi‘s founder and CEO Lei Jun confirmed Tuesday evening that the company has not given up on its self-developed Surge chipsets, despite the lack of any follow-up model since the company launched its first processor Surge S1 in 2017.

“It is true that we came across some difficulties since we launched the Surge S1 in 2017,” Lei said on his official Weibo account after being asked whether Xiaomi will continue developing the chipset. “But we have not given up the plan. I will keep the public updated when we make actual progress.”

Lei then confirmed this during his speech on Tuesday for the company’s 10th anniversary event.

China’s smartphone maker introduced its first in-house chipset Surge S1 in February 2017, intended to power its flagship Mi 5C smartphone and making Xiaomi one of the few manufacturers in the world to have a proprietary smartphone chip — joining Huawei, Apple, and Samsung. However, Mi 5C remains the only smartphone to be powered by this Surge S1 SoC years after its launch.

According to Lei, Xiaomi‘s research and development (R&D) expenditure in 2020 is expected to surpass 10 billion yuan.

“Our ceaseless motivation to extensively explore and innovate, combined with our R&D investments have enabled us to bring more and cooler projects to the customers,” Lei said.

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Lei also highlighted three major development strategies for the company during his speech, including rebuilding the passion for innovation, using the Internet to empower manufacturing, and pursuing a sound and steady strategic development.

“We believe in the power of the Internet and its approaches. We will continue to empower manufacturing with the Internet,” Lei said. “We will also evaluate things in view of 10 years, and do things that will be valuable in the long-term.”