(Yicai Global) Feb. 25 -- Chinese smartphone maker Oppo Mobile Telecommunications has released this year’s new model, the Find X5 Series. The high-end Find X5 Pro is reportedly equipped with Oppo’s first self-developed neural processing chip, the MariSilicon X.

The Find X5 Pro has a starting price of CNY5,999 (USD949.70), and began accepting pre-orders yesterday, online news outlet The Paper reported today. It will be officially available from March 3.

Oppo said that MariSilicon X and Snapdragon 8 series mobile platforms will jointly become the left and right brains for the handset’s core computing, opening the era of computational photography with two chips in one cell phone.

Overall growth of the global smartphone market has begun to slow. Third-party market researcher IDC expects last year’s shipments to have risen 5.3 percent to 1.35 billion, compared with a previous forecast of 7.4 percent.

So big manufacturers are looking to grab the space left in the high-end market by Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies. As a result, with the commercialization of self-developed chips, 2022 is very likely to be the year when Oppo will make a substantial breakthrough in the high-end market, The Paper said.

According to IDC data, Oppo’s annual mobile shipments stood at about 133 million last year, an annual increase of 20.1 percent. With a market share of 9.9 percent, the Dongguan-based firm ranked fourth globally, behind Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple.

Editor: Peter Thomas