Chinese smartphone maker Oppo disbanded its chip design house Zeku in May, stimulating commentary on Zeku being the latest victim of the US-China chip war among the media in China. However, blaming geopolitical pressure for Zeku's failure does not help stakeholders to prevent the same mistake from recurring. Zeku's CEO Liu Jun and Oppo founder Duan Yongping made it clear: with sales far lower than expected, the investment needed for self-designed chips went through of the roof and it became prohibitively difficult to sustain the operation, thus...