Oppo has opened up its first research and development center in India in a bid to make a deeper inroad into the country smartphone market, which is located in Hyderabad, Hitech City, the facility is as of now apparently its largest R&D center which is also outside China. The company as of now has four R&D centers across worldwide.
The new site as of now has a team of more than 50 people on the development center and another 50 pool of quality control. The company also revealed that it has plans to increase the workforce to about 500 in the coming five years. Oppo first R&D center in India will now focus more on the Artificial Intelligence, camera, 5G, and fast charging.
“We mainly emphasis on deeper consumer insight, based on which we set our direction,” Tasleem Arif, Vice-President and R&D Head, Oppo India toldindianexpress.com. Citing the 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.
Research and Development is a key to the company plans to dominate the global market of smartphone. Oppo as of now has 3000 engineers who are working at its R&D center across all of their locations, and the company plans to invest RMB 10 Billion towards the R&D space in the few coming years.
Arif said the new R&D center in India would work on a number of local features that will help improve the experience on its phones. UX is one area where the role of the local facility will be crucial. “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 localized inputs,” he explains.
“This new India R&D hub will help Oppo respond to 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 CyberMedia Research. “We can expect the India mobile handset ecosystem to catalyze further and go up the innovation ladder, with new intellectual property being created.”
