China-based ZTE has received a cash injection from the government enabling the company to accelerate the development of its own application processors, while Lenovo also intends to develop ARM-based chips in-house, according to industry sources.
ZTE has received CNY2.4 billion (US$73.8 million) from China's National IC Industry Investment Fund, which will help it accelerate the mobile chip development, said the sources.
Huawei has its subsidiary HiSilicon provide ARM-architecture SoCs, which are found in many of the smartphone vendor's models including high-end ones, the sources indicated. Huawei's increasing use of HiSilicon chips is already unfavorable to the existing suppliers including MediaTek and Qualcomm.
Meanwhile, Xiaomi is partnering with chip designer Leadcore Technology to jointly develop ARM-based SoCs for Xiaomi's devices available for 2016, the sources noted.
In addition, China-based SoC designers including Allwinner, HiSilicon, Rockchip and Spreadtrum have significantly enhanced their design capability, the sources observed. Spreadtrum, for example, has disclosed plans to introduce its 1Xnm FinFET solutions in 2016.
