Smartphone brand OPPO has announced $1.4 billion worth investment in research & development (R&D), in the areas of 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and smart devices, in 2019.
With this announced investment, OPPO’s R&D spending saw a 150% year-on-year increase. According to OPPO founder & CEO, Tony Chen, the company would continue to increase investment on a yearly basis. With the increased R&D capital, OPPO will integrate its supply chain and build on its technical expertise to enhance the company’s technological capabilities.
Further, OPPO will leverage AI to develop a range of smart devices – including smart watches and smart home technologies – to explore and meet the increasingly rigid demands of consumers in the age of the Internet of Things (IoT). It has already applied AI technologies across a wide range of applications including photography, facial recognition and fingerprint identification. It has introduced many innovative features, including an AI-powered beauty camera, 3D portrait lighting and intelligent recognition scenarios.
As a technology company, OPPO also focuses relentlessly on the development of frontier technologies, such as 5G. When 5G standards were frozen in December 2017, OPPO quickly invested in the development of 5G products, taking the lead in enabling interoperability of 5G signalling and data links in August 2018 before realising the first 5G smartphone connection this past October.
“5G is a trend OPPO must embrace… OPPO will fully integrate 5G with applications and user insights, and continuously innovate to provide users with revolutionary, necessary, convenient and seamless experiences,” Chen states.
“We must dare to explore, dare to make breakthroughs and dare to innovate. In the future, OPPO will fully integrate technological innovation with art and humanity, to develop smart devices and smart homes with the smartphone at their core, and an underlying mission of continuing to meet people’s expectations for a better life…In the future, smartphones will become intelligent personal assistants – and this is something OPPO will definitely enable,” he concludes.