Oppo inaugurates its largest R&D centre in Hyderabad, outside China
New Delhi : Ranked as third smartphone player, after Samsung and Huawei, Oppo has inaugurated its Research & Development centre in India. The new R&D centre is an attempt to strengthen its root in the country's smartphone market. Oppo's new facility is located in Hitech city, Hyderabad and the company claims that it is the largest R&D centre outside of China. Till now, the company has four R&D centres across the globe, and most of them are located in China.
Oppo's new R&D center in Hyderabad has 50 people on the development side and another 50 on the quality side. The company said it plans to increase the workforce to about 500 in the next three to five years. Oppo’s first R&D centre in India will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), camera, fast charging tech and 5G.
“We mainly emphasis more on a deeper consumer insight and based on a consumer insight, we set our direction,” Tasleem Arif, Vice President and R&D Head, Oppo India told media.
Also, citing an example of Oppo’s new Super VOOC fast-charging technology which supports the charging power to 50W, Arif said it was the hard work of the R&D department that made it possible to introduce such innovate feature before anyone else.
Needless to say that research and development plays a vital role in company's growth. Oppo currently has 3000 engineers working at its R&D centres across all locations, and the company plans to invest RMB 10 billion towards the R&D space in the coming year.
Arif said that the new R&D centre of Oppo in India will work on number of local features that will help improve the experience on its phones. UX is one area where the role of local facility will be important. “UX is based on local needs. Now we have four designers for India, who will try to do research around the Indian consumer and soon you will see the next version of ColorOS with all localised inputs,” he explains.
“For Oppo, this new India R&D hub will help in responding to demanding consumer aspirations in India by tapping Indian R&D skill-sets and expertise. The new India-centric innovations could further be potentially introduced in global markets, helping Oppo in maintaining their competitive edge, as well as in attracting new users with their innovations,” said Prabhu Ram, Head- Industry Intelligence Group (IIG) at Cyber Media Research. “We can expect the India mobile handset ecosystem to catalyse further and go up the innovation ladder, with new intellectual property being created.”
