Enlarge / The Xiaomi Mi Mix. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is looking to join the ranks of Apple, Samsung, and Huawei by developing its own smartphone chips. The report says the move is part of “aspirations to join the top tier” of smartphone manufacturers and an attempt to stand out from the slew of other OEMs.

For now, Xiaomi’s processor is apparently called “Pinecone,” and it will be released “within a month” according to the report. This might be talking about the processor of the Xiaomi Mi 6, which, if Xiaomi keeps to the usual yearly release cycle, should be out sometime in March. Xiaomi’s chip design division isn’t coming from nowhere—using a shell company called “Beijing Pinecone Electronics,” Xiaomi paid $15 million to acquire mobile processor technology from Datang subsidiary Leadcore Technology Ltd.

Today, every Android OEM that isn’t Samsung or Huawei relies on Qualcomm for high-end phone processors. Sometimes Qualcomm drops the ball, like with 2015’s hotter-than-usual Snapdragon 810, and when that happens, most OEMs have no alternative. Samsung has its in-house Exynos SoC division, but most years it still ships Qualcomm devices to the US market. In 2015, Samsung used its chip diversity to its advantage and shipped Exynos in the Galaxy S6, dodging the Snapdragon 810 problems and creating the best-performing smartphone of the year.