In an increasingly interconnected and digital world, the need for robust security solutions has never been greater. DAHUA Technology, a leading name in the video surveillance industry, has risen to the challenge with its innovative Network Cameras. These advanced devices are not just cameras; they are the guardians of modern security, offering a blend of cutting-edge technology, intelligent analytics, and user-friendly design to protect what matters most.

The Vanguard of Video Surveillance:
DAHUA Network Cameras represent the forefront of video surveillance technology. With features such as high-resolution imaging, wide dynamic range, and infrared night vision, these cameras provide clear and detailed footage around the clock. Whether it’s broad daylight or the dead of night, DAHUA ensures that every moment is captured with precision and clarity.

DAHUA WizMind Cameras: Your Reliable Surveillance Shield

Integrating AI for Smarter Security:
At the heart of DAHUA’s Network Cameras lies the integration of artificial intelligence (AI). This technology enables the cameras to perform intelligent analytics, such as facial recognition, object detection, and behavioral analysis. By processing data in real time, DAHUA cameras can identify potential threats and anomalies, allowing for proactive security measures rather than just passive monitoring.

Scalability and Flexibility:
One of the key strengths of DAHUA Network Cameras is their scalability and flexibility. These cameras are designed to cater to a variety of security needs, from small businesses to large enterprises and public spaces. Whether it’s an office building, a retail store, or a busy street, DAHUA offers customizable solutions that can be tailored to fit any environment.

Ease of Integration and Management:
For security systems to be effective, they must also be easy to integrate and manage. DAHUA Network Cameras are compatible with a wide range of security platforms and devices, ensuring seamless integration into existing infrastructures. Moreover, DAHUA’s intuitive management software simplifies the monitoring and control process, allowing security personnel to oversee their camera networks with ease.

Reliability and Durability:
In the realm of security, reliability is paramount. DAHUA Network Cameras are built to last, with robust designs that can withstand harsh weather conditions and challenging environments. These cameras are designed for continuous operation, providing a dependable surveillance solution that never wavers.

The company most promising to become the next domestic mobile phone chip giant suddenly announced its dissolution. On May 12, news came out of the market that OPPO’s chip manufacturer ZEKU announced its closure.

Regarding this news, OPPO responded to the “City Circle” saying, “Faced with the uncertainty of the global economy and mobile phone market, after careful consideration, the company decided to terminate the ZEKU business. This is a difficult decision, and we will properly handle relevant matters and We will continue to make good products and continue to create value.”

As for the reasons for shutting down Zheku and the impact on OPPO’s other businesses, OPPO said: “This is a normal business decision of the company. The company is operating normally and the business is carried out in an orderly manner.”

As the mobile phone chip manufacturer with the largest investment in China in recent years, Zheku, a subsidiary of OPPO, suddenly announced its dissolution, which made many people in the industry feel “very shocked”. According to Wei Chengyan, an employee of Zheku, they were only dismissed after a meeting on May 12. According to the news of layoffs, the business of his team has been very stable. Just a few months ago, OPPO had just launched the latest Bluetooth audio chip Mariana Y.

As for Zheku’s status in the industry, a person familiar with the chip industry told “City Circle”, “This is equivalent to ByteDance in the chip industry. It is shut down at the first sign. Many people recommended this company in the past two years. , 985 fresh graduates are rushing to go because the salary is very high, and ordinary fresh graduates start with an annual salary of 400,000.”

But the matter was not without rumors. On the evening of May 11, Wei Chengyan and others received a notice from the company, announcing that they would work from home the next day and hold an all-staff meeting. They also stated that from 0 o’clock that night, 24 hours later, the company’s IT system When closed, mobile phones and laptops cannot access the company network. Such a strange request indicates that something big is about to happen.

But what everyone didn’t expect was that the news that was about to be announced was that the company was gone.

The tens of billions of chip giants suddenly collapsed

On the morning of May 12, Huang Cheng, Zheku chip front-end verification engineer, received the news of being laid off: “It felt so sudden. I had to apply for a job before I had time to react. The company was still hiring last week!” Wei Chengyan He also mentioned that his team was still recruiting people last month.

Due to the rush of time, Huang Cheng didn’t even have time to take a new ID photo. Instead, he took a screenshot of his profile picture directly from the system and inserted it into his resume. “It’s impossible for me not to panic. This is my first job. I’ve only worked for less than a year. If I had worked for five years, I wouldn’t panic at all.”

Starting in August 2022, he came to this chip company owned by OPPO to engage in front-end verification related work, and it has only been about 9 months. Although he received a total of four months’ salary and a total compensation of more than 100,000 yuan, Huang Cheng was still full of a sense of urgency: “That’s more than 3,000 people, who suddenly flooded into the market, and I’m not that confident in my competitiveness.” ”

Regarding the number of employees of Zheku, “City Circle” did not obtain exact figures, but according to multiple employees, Zheku has about 3,000 employees worldwide, including about 2,500 in China. “In addition to China, ZEKU has also established research institutes in many countries.” A ZEKU employee revealed.

Among Zheku’s two to three thousand employees, a large proportion are fresh graduates who have just entered the workplace, and Huang Cheng is one of them. According to Wei Chengyan, during the peak period of expansion in the past two years, Zheku hired six to seven hundred fresh graduates alone.

Of course, in addition to fresh graduates, Zheku has also tapped senior practitioners who have been in the industry for more than ten years. According to a HiSilicon engineer who has been in the industry for ten years, OPPO has poached a lot of people from Huawei since HiSilicon was sanctioned in 2019. People related to the chip went there, but he was unable to go due to personal reasons.

Wei Chengyan himself is an old man in the chip industry. It has been 13 years since he entered the industry in 2010. He has worked in Huawei, Qualcomm and other companies. He joined Zheku in March 2022 and his position was NPU system software engineer. “At that time The chip industry is very hot, and Zheku’s salary is higher than that of major international companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek,” Wei Chengyan said.

Faced with sudden changes, whether they are newcomers to the workplace like Huang Cheng or industry veterans like Wei Chengyan, they all feel rushed. According to the information obtained by “City Circle”, OPPO has provided three solutions to Zheku employees according to different situations:

For fresh graduates who have not yet joined Zheku, if they are willing to join OPPO, OPPO will unconditionally accept it and unify the work location as Chang’an, Dongguan; all salary conditions provided remain unchanged; departments and specific positions will be determined by OPPO after all feedback from students. HR will contact and confirm with students before May 31st.

For fresh graduates who have not yet joined Zheku and are unwilling to join OPPO, Zheku provides compensation of three times the offered monthly salary and monthly bonus.

However, OPPO did not provide internal “live water” opportunities for employees who had already joined Zheku. Instead, Zheku directly provided n+3 compensation.

Huang Cheng believes that he is the “worst” person in the layoff crisis. He said: “OPPO provides opportunities for internal transfer to fresh graduates who have not reported, but we can only choose n+3 for our regular employees. It is easy to find big bosses who have worked for a long time. The worst thing is for me. It’s a one-year job. I don’t have any experience, and I don’t have the opportunity to change jobs, so I have to rely on myself.”

However, even fresh graduates who have the opportunity to change jobs can’t help but feel panic. “City Circle” noticed that on May 12th, some fresh graduates who had signed a tripartite agreement with Zheku were seeking opportunities on the job search platform. A post read: “Please accept, Zheku fresh graduates. Last year, they received more than a dozen an offer.”

In this regard, an employee who also resigned from Zheku today analyzed: “It’s normal to choose to leave, but it’s abnormal to stay. Many people’s work locations must have changed, and your previous plans have been disrupted. I can leave, but I don’t know if the position is suitable.”

In addition to newcomers in the workplace, big bosses in the workplace may also feel at a loss due to this sudden layoff. Several OPPO employees confirmed to “City Circle” that in April, Sun Chengkun, the head of the AI direction of the overseas team of the former chip company Biren Technology, had just joined Zheku. It has been less than a month since he joined Zheku, and he is apparently being laid off as well. among the list.

Huang Cheng believes that this shows that even among the middle and senior management of Zheku, there are only a few people who know in advance that the business will be abolished. According to Wei Chengyan, the company now only allows people to go back in batches to pick up personal items: “Before today’s meeting, we only allowed people to pick up personal items. Now the IT system has been locked. The email said that next week we will arrange for everyone to sort out personal items and retrieve them in batches. ”

According to the document obtained by “City Boundary”, OPPO announced the business abolition, there are only a few words in it, which is consistent with OPPO’s response to “City Boundary”, and there is no more information. Zheku Technology, a star chip company that once claimed to have invested 50 billion yuan and attracted the attention of thousands of people, came to an end overnight.
An unstoppable money-burning machine

In 2019, HiSilicon Semiconductor, China’s largest chip design company and a subsidiary of Huawei, was included in the sanctions list. Its Kirin 9000 series launched in 2020 became the last generation of flagship chips. Since the Huawei mate40 series in 2020, Huawei’s flagship mobile phones can only use Qualcomm. Castrated 4G chip.

In the same year that HiSilicon encountered sanctions, OPPO officially established Zheku Technology and began to build its chip team. In December 2021, OPPO officially launched the first 6nm imaging-specific NPU chip “Mariana X”. In December 2022, it released its self-developed chip flagship Bluetooth audio SoC “Mariana Y” again. handwriting.

As a semiconductor company under OPPO, Zheku was once regarded as the chip giant most promising to succeed Huawei’s HiSilicon. Just when the industry was expecting Zheku to bring OPPO’s first self-developed SoC, news came that the company was disbanded.

As for the reason for the closure of Zheku, one of the rumors circulating in the industry is that the tape-out (risk trial production) of its self-developed 4nm mobile phone AP (application processor) failed. However, some employees said that the chip project is progressing normally. The well-known digital blogger @digitalchatstation also revealed that OPPO’s AP chip has already reached FPGA verification (one of the design verification steps) at the beginning of the year, and has not yet reached the tape-out stage.

Wei Chengyan, who is mainly responsible for NPU software development, also told “City Circle” that OPPO’s AP chip has not yet reached the tape-out stage, and there is no question of whether it has failed or not. “Tapping-out is a long process and is calculated on a monthly basis. , It’s not a matter of one or two days.”

According to this news, “City Circle” asked OPPO for verification, but the other party said that they did not reply with more information.

Compared with the failure of tape-out, more people tend to believe that the reason for the abolition of Zheku is that OPPO plans to “stop losses in time” on extremely expensive chip research and development.

A Zheku employee revealed to “City Circle” that the news he heard was that Zheku was unable to make a profit and OPPO could no longer afford it. Huang Cheng told “City Circle”: “After all, the original investment was 50 billion yuan, and it has not been burned out yet. As far as I know, at most 10 billion yuan has been burned. It’s just that the boss doesn’t want to do it strategically.”

At noon on May 12, when the investment platform Snowball responded to a netizen’s comment about the disappearance of Zheku, Duan Yongping, founder of BBK Group, said: “Correction of mistakes must be made as soon as possible. No matter what the cost, it is the minimum price.”

For a long time, OPPO and vivo have been regarded as BBK companies. A HiSilicon engineer who has been in the industry for 12 years also speculated that Duan Yongping still has a certain influence in OPPO.

An industry insider analyzed “City Circle” that OPPO’s dismissal of the chip team this time was “unexpected but reasonable” and was mainly affected by the decline in global terminal business. According to this person, the industry was not very optimistic about ZEKU’s baseband chips before, but they did not expect that even APs would be cut this time. “I thought they would at least follow Apple’s route and choose external basebands. In fact, this is how it was implemented, but I didn’t expect them all to be cut off.”

Wei Chengyan also mentioned that since last year, due to the downturn in the terminal industry, the chip industry has actually been cooling down and many companies have closed down. Therefore, the recruitment scale of Zheku has also shrunk a lot this year, with fresh graduates less than half of last year. , the years and experience requirements for social recruitment have also been increased.

Another digital blogger told “City Circle” that the closure of Zheku may be related to OPPO’s poor operating performance in recent years. Although it has a good market share, it has many loss-making projects. Compared with its investment in the chip field, the blogger said that OPPO’s investment in OnePlus is easier to recoup. At the end of last year, OPPO announced that it would invest tens of billions in the next three years to support OnePlus brand building.

“Zheku will not be able to make money in the short term, but OnePlus will make money immediately. Although it claims to have zero profit from hardware within three years, advertising, app store channels, pre-installed apps, etc. are all ways of making money.” The blogger said about “City Boundary” “express.

Zheku’s sudden announcement of its disbandment has made the industry worried about the future of vivo, another mobile phone manufacturer that makes cores. However, according to @digitalchatstation, compared with OPPO, vivo currently only makes small chips such as AI, ISP, and NPU, and has no capital investment. OPPO is so big, but in terms of SoC, vivo mainly relies on mature upstream manufacturers for light customization. It is relatively mature and has a smaller chance of overturning.
Domestic chips still have fire

Despite feeling helpless and regretful, Zheku’s collapse undoubtedly shocked the entire chip industry.

A senior chip practitioner judged: “With more than 3,000 Zheku employees, if such a large amount is released at once, it will be difficult for other companies to accept them all at once.” An employee of Biren Technology also told “City Circle”, The current employment environment in the industry is not stable, and positions and salaries are not as good as they were two years ago.

Another practitioner expressed disbelief at OPPO’s choice to “disband” Zheku. In his view, OPPO can at least divest its chip business through asset sales rather than direct shutdown. “Selling the chip business will at least make some money, and the buyer can also take over the employees,” he said.

Looking back on December 18, 2022, the day OPPO released “Mariana Y”, OPPO founder Chen Mingyong said in an internal speech: “The chip is something we must do based on our purpose, and it is also We must do it well… We are not just on a whim, and all the ups and downs have been taken into consideration.”

▲OPPO founder and CEO Chen Mingyong. Source/Visual China

He also compared making chips to playing Go, saying, “There is no such thing as a master, only the accumulation of skills step by step is a master.”

No one could have imagined that just a few months later, Zheku, who had made up his mind to develop his own chip, would take the initiative to put down his chess pieces and leave this stalemate and complicated fight. This may indicate that the degree of “wind and rain setbacks” has exceeded OPPO’s imagination, and the market has not left Zheku time to accumulate step by step. Becoming the “next HiSilicon” is not as easy as you think.

But the market is not very pessimistic, and domestic chipmakers are still on the way. Wang Xiaolong, research director of Xinmo, told “City Circle”: “Although Zheku is gone, at least there are Unisoc and Lingsheng in China, which have retained the firepower for local mobile phone chips.”

Another person in the chip industry also said that there is no need to worry too much about Zheku’s people, “they will be poached soon.” In this practitioner’s view, this industry will not be short of money and resources, and relevant departments have been All are strongly supporting.

After all, all domestic chip makers have been prepared since a few years ago. This will be a protracted battle that will involve the entire industry working together to tackle difficulties.

The Impact on Modern Security Landscape:
The introduction of DAHUA Network Cameras has had a transformative impact on the modern security landscape. By offering a comprehensive surveillance solution that combines AI analytics, high-definition imaging, and ease of use, DAHUA has set a new standard for what security systems can achieve.

DAHUA Network Cameras stand as the guardians of modern security, providing a formidable defense against threats and risks. With their advanced technology, intelligent capabilities, and reliable performance, these cameras are the cornerstone of a smarter, safer future. As we continue to navigate an ever-changing world, DAHUA Technology remains at the forefront, ensuring that our security needs are met with innovation and excellence.

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Sean Woolf

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