Xiaomi, which rose to become the world's third-largest smartphone company in 2020, announced the development of its own smartphone AP. As interest gathers on which foundry will be in charge of AP specifications and production, expectations are high that it will rapidly emerge as China's leading smartphone maker, surpassing Huawei.

Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturing company, announced that it will hold a new product launch event at 7:30 PM local time on March 29th.

According to local Chinese media, the company plans to announce a smartphone AP that will be used in its smartphones at this launch event.

Xiaomi's AP for smartphones is said to be independently designed by Xiaomi, and is expected to be mass-produced and installed in new smartphones to be announced.

In particular, the industry is closely watching Xiaomi's AP development and adoption, as it surpassed Huawei last year to become the world's third-largest smartphone manufacturer.

The smartphone industry has recently been struggling due to the semiconductor shortage, and Xiaomi's development of its own AP is believed to be intended to minimize the impact of the semiconductor shortage.

Along with this, the question of which foundry will produce Xiaomi's AP is also emerging as a matter of local interest.

Looking at Xiaomi's smartphone shipments in 2020, it shipped 29.2 million units in the first quarter, 28.3 million units in the second quarter, 46.6 million units in the third quarter, and 42.3 million units in the fourth quarter, for a total of 146.4 million smartphones per year, continuing steady growth.

Accordingly, it is expected that the number of orders for APs that Xiaomi will be entrusted with production for this time will also be significant.

Along with this, expectations are rising for the specifications that Xiaomi's AP will show this time.

Among Chinese companies in the past, Huawei was the first in the world to introduce its own 7nm AP. It also recorded high scores in benchmark performance and showed no major problems in running high-performance games.

In particular, since Huawei has shown good performance in the high-performance smartphone market with low prices as its weapon, Xiaomi, which also uses cost-effectiveness as its weapon, is expected to have an opportunity to absorb a large portion of Huawei's smartphone market, which is shrinking due to the influence of US sanctions, if its own AP performance is good, and solidify its position as the world's third-largest smartphone company.

Accordingly, the industry is closely watching Xiaomi's announcement.