Following the news that Oppo is likely to pull out of the French market, it now appears that the company has closed its chip design unit named Zeku. According to the South China Morning Post, workers at Zeku got less than a day's notice that the company was shutting down, which was on Thursday last week. Employees weren't even allowed back into the office to collect their personal belongings. As recent as two weeks ago, Zeku was still looking for new hires, which makes the abrupt closure even more peculiar, especially as Zeku is said to have employed upwards of 3,000 people.

Considering that Oppo is ranked as the fourth largest smartphone maker in terms of globally shipped units in Q1, the way the company has handled the closure of its chip design unit reeks of desperation. It should be noted that Zeku wasn't designing chips to power Oppo's phones, but presumably Zeku was behind the MariSilicon X, which was Oppo's own imaging co-processor. In all fairness, Oppo is far from the only company to have closed down business units this year, but the company is also said to be suffering in terms of shipments of smartphones, as the company saw a drop of 22 percent in shipments last year, to 103 million units. This appears to be part of the reason behind the shutdown of Zeku, but Oppo hasn't provided much in terms of details behind the closure.