What to expect from the new Xiaomi Pinecone processor?

The new Xiaomi Pinecone processor is about to hit the market integrated in the Xiaomi Mi 5C that will probably be presented tomorrow. We have talked something about the technical characteristics of this new smartphone, but the most relevant thing is not that, but the relevance that this new Xiaomi Pinecone could have in the market. We are going to analyze different news that we can expect from this processor.

1.- Xiaomi's own processor

Xiaomi has gone from being a company that offered cheap mobiles, to becoming one of the references among Chinese mobiles. In fact, it is something like the Apple of China. And the truth is that the company is of a high level. However, if we analyze the three major mobile manufacturers on the market, Samsung, Apple and Huawei, in that order, we observe that all three have their own processors, and that all three use them in their flagships. Now Xiaomi will join that group of manufacturers that have their own invoice processor. This will be relevant for Xiaomi.

2.- The first Pinecone will be a medium-high range

The first Pinecone processor will be a processor that will not be far from the processors that we will see in the best Xiaomi phones. In fact, it will be an eight-core processor with ARM Cortex-A53 architecture on the eight cores and a configuration of two clusters of four plus four cores. To give us an idea, this Pinecone would correspond to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808, a high-end smartphone, although not the best of 2015, which now, of course, would be a bit far. Precisely that will be the level of the first Xiaomi Pinecone, being the processor of a mobile like the Xiaomi Mi 5C, which is actually an economic version of the flagship launched last year, and something more basic.

3.- Better optimization

Having your own processor has different advantages. When you work with a generic processor, which has not been designed by you, the company's engineers have to adapt it to the smartphone they work on. When the engineering team developing the processor works alongside the engineering team developing the smartphone, you can almost design a custom processor for your smartphone, and it is always more likely that the software can also be optimized to work with that processor. All this will have an impact on a better performance of mobiles, and therefore, in making your mobiles special and unique. Nor will it be easy to compare them directly with other mobiles, as it will happen as it is now with the Huawei, the Samsung or the iPhone.

4.- Cheapest mobiles

It is clear that in a company that seeks to make the price of its smartphones as cheap as possible, something key when developing a new processor was to ensure that it would result in their phones being cheaper. They do that with their own processors, of course. Basically, they have reached an agreement with the Leadcore company, who already manufactured the entry-level processor for the Xiaomi Redmi 4A. They have created a new joint company between these two that will be Pinecone, and that will manufacture the processors that will be used by Xiaomi mobiles. With its own manufacture, the processor costs will be significantly lower than those that exist when acquiring a Qualcomm, and that should also be clear in the price of the smartphones when they arrive on the market, as it happens with the Huawei.

5.- More balanced mid-range, cheaper basic range, more advanced high-range

However, Xiaomi's strategy is to ensure that its manufacture of processors is useful not only for its high-end smartphones, and thus be able to compete with the best Huawei, iPhone and Samsung, but also that it has utility in all ranges of smartphones they have. The mid-range will be the first to feature the Xiaomi Pinecone. It will be a perfect way to analyze if they can get a good performance with this processor, at the same time that they lower the price somewhat. It will be something like seeing if with their own component they can match the quality that they had before having to acquire the component from another company. From here, there will be two paths for Xiaomi. One of them will be to make basic processors for cheaper mobiles, and make them even cheaper, and to make advanced processors for more advanced level mobiles and achieve better performance. A long-term strategy to ensure that the Pinecone end up being, after one or two years, the processors that are integrated into almost all the company's mobiles.

6.- Other mobiles with Pinecone

However, there could be one more goal for Pinecone processors, and that is that Xiaomi also wants to market them so that other manufacturers can integrate them into their smartphones. After all, if Xiaomi uses them, why not a company like UMi, Elephone or LeEco. That would make Pinecone a competitor to Qualcomm. Not so much from Samsung or Huawei, because they manufacture their own processors but their sales market volume is very low, but yes for Qualcomm. Although it will even be a problem for Samsung, since they have their factories in which they produce Qualcomm and Apple processors, and which could now have Xiaomi as a rival.