Gadgets
Oppo Cuts 20 Percent of Staff After Going Up Against Apple
Oppo, which in 2016 became the country’s top-selling brand, is retrenching after expanding too rapidly on the hiring front in recent years and attacking a premium segment dominated by Apple, people familiar with the matter said. The cuts affect important units including a team that customises Android into its in-house ColorOS, and an Internet of Things division that develops a spectrum of wearables such as smartwatches and earbuds, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing a private matter.
Oppo has merged since mid-2021 with smaller high-end brand OnePlus, with which it shares backers, to pool development resources and reduce overhead, but that’s creating redundant positions. Its R&D team for phones and overseas sales positions haven’t been impacted yet by cuts, one of the people said. An Oppo representative declined to comment for the story.
Shenzhen-based Oppo built one of China’s biggest smartphone brands by rallying private retailers in rural areas and tricking out its devices with larger batteries and memory. But heavy investments to expand into markets from India to Southeast Asia and Europe have not paid off as expected against fierce competition from the likes of Xiaomi and Apple. It’s now contending with a Chinese retail slowdown as COVID’s resurgence locks down parts of the country.
Forays into adjacent arenas also haven’t worked out. After several years, Oppo’s share of the global smartwatch market remains under 1 percent, while it accounts for a mere 1.7 percent of earwear shipments, IDC analyst Bryan Ma estimated.
“The company is spread thin across several fronts, attacking the premium market, making big regional bets and moving into wearables,” said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint. “The cuts are probably as much about cost savings as it is a change in tack around strategy.”
At its peak, Oppo showered retailers with handsome bonuses to grab market share and commissioned a headquarters building in Shenzhen designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, complete with a 20-story vertical lobby and an art gallery.
Rejuvenation Needed
The company, closely held by a secretive employees’ fund which counts businessman Duan Yongping and his protégé Tony Chen as key founders, doesn’t disclose financial details. Oppo’s global smartphone shipments surged 37 percent in the second quarter, but that was barely enough to keep its No. 4 ranking, according to research firm IDC.
OnePlus has made deeper inroads into the US market than any other Chinese brand to date, but it’s also failed to directly challenge Apple and Samsung among premium customers. Local rival Huawei, also briefly the country’s biggest smartphone vendor, in 2020 sold much of its device business after American sanctions choked off the supply of vital semiconductors.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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