vivo will expand to Europe and Africa in 2018 with Qualcomm's help

vivo is one of the top smartphone makers yet the brand is not well known outside of its key markets – China and India. That will change next year as the company expands into Europe and Africa.

To bolster its position, vivo signed a $4 billion memorandum of understanding with Qualcomm. This will entail technical partnership and patent sharing to bring 5G phones to market and diversify biometric authentication features.

vivo was the first to do demo a fingerprint reader below the display, but the two companies also want to develop 3D facial identification (think iPhone X), along with scanning palm prints, iris scanning and more.

Recently, the company launched the X20 with Face Wake, vivo’s facial recognition (based on the 12MP selfie camera), and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 chipset.

Sibling company Oppo and rival Xiaomi signed similar memorandums with Qualcomm, pushing up the potential monetary value up to $12 billion (which will be spread out over 3 years). Oppo and Xiaomi are also interested in 3D scanning tech, which was reportedly co-developed by Qualcomm and Himax (which made a crucial component in the Google Glass display).