Lenovo also intends to develop ARM-based chips in-house following Huawei which has its subsidiary HiSilicon provide ARM-architecture SoCs.

According to Digitimes,  ZTE has received $73.8 million from China's National IC Industry Investment Fund, which will help it accelerate the mobile chip development.

Xiaomi is partnering with chip designer Leadcore Technology to jointly develop ARM-based SoCs for Xiaomi's devices available for 2016.

China-based SoC designers including Allwinner, HiSilicon, Rockchip and Spreadtrum have significantly enhanced their design capability, presumably with a helping hand from the government. Spreadtrum has revealed plans to introduce its 1Xnm FinFET solutions in 2016.

The moves are not sitting well with suppliers including MediaTek and Qualcomm which are apparently already losing out to HiSilicon chips.