Special note: On October 12, we published “Reflections on Potential Risks in Rockchip’s Sustainable Development”. It is recommended to fully consider potential risks before reading this article.
In the performance forecast for the first three quarters of 2025, Rockchip stated that the demand in the AIoT market continues to grow. Benefiting from the continuous iteration of AI technology and the ongoing expansion of application scenarios, AIoT across various industries is currently in an innovative development cycle. So, what strategy is Rockchip adopting to embrace this innovative development cycle across various industries?
The following are our study notes on Rockchip’s “Investor Relations Activity Record (September 2025)”, titled “From RK3588 to RK182X to RK3688: An Insight into Rockchip’s Product Strategy”.
(1) Cornerstone: The Current Status and Ecological Base of RK3588
RK3588 is Rockchip’s flagship AIoT general-purpose platform launched in 2021, featuring a 4×A76 + 4×A55 octa-core CPU, Mali-G610 MP4 GPU, and 6 TOPS NPU. With 8K encoding/decoding, a 48 MP ISP, support for up to four independent displays, and a rich array of high-speed interfaces, it has become a benchmark for reference designs in high-end tablets, edge computing boxes, cloud terminals, NVRs, commercial displays, and in-vehicle cockpits over the past three years. As of now, over 12 million units have been shipped globally, continuing to ramp up, contributing stable cash flow and a large customer base for the company’s “dual-wheel drive” strategy discussed below.
(2) Left Wheel: The “Computing Power Socket” for Fragmented Markets — RK182X Co-Processor
1. Demand Side: The annual shipment volume of terminal devices in scenarios such as automotive cockpits, industrial gateways, and educational tablets exceeds 300 million units, but the lifecycle of the main control chip often lasts 5–7 years. Customers want to run 3B/7B large models but are unwilling to redesign the entire machine for AI computing power.
2. Supply Side: RK182X can be plugged into the existing RK356X/RK3588 platform via PCIe 3.0×4 or USB4, making it plug-and-play; the 32–128 TOPS customizable array can achieve real-time inference of Llama-2 7B INT8 at a power consumption level of 10 W, costing only one-third of a motherboard replacement.
3. Business Rhythm: The first batch of five “lighthouse customers” will enter small-scale production in Q4 2025, covering three major categories: aftermarket cockpit boxes, edge NVRs, and AI educational tablets; the company expects to increase market share in these segments to 25%, 40%, and 30% respectively by 2026, contributing revenue of 400–500 million yuan, with gross margins 8–10 percentage points higher than traditional SoCs, forming a “cash cow”.
(3) Right Wheel: The “Performance Anchor” for High-End Markets — RK3688 Flagship SoC
1. Performance Leap: CPU 300K DMIPS is approximately 70% of Apple’s M1, GPU 2 TFLOPS reaches 3.3 times that of RK3588, and 32 TOPS NPU is on par with Qualcomm 8 Gen3, with unified 256-bit LPDDR5X providing 102 GB/s bandwidth, achieving “PC-level computing power” in the AIoT field under 15 W for the first time.
2. Scenario Upgrade: Smart cockpits with multi-screen (4×4K or 1×8K), service robots with “big and small brains integrated”, ARM-based thin clients/Chromebooks, industrial edge small stations… these markets have an annual scale of 150 million units, with ASP 2–3 times that of RK3588, presenting a potential revenue space of 20 billion yuan.
3. Rhythm Control: RK3688 is set for TSMC 4 nm tape-out by the end of 2025, with mass production in Q2 2026; RK3588 will maintain a price range of $10–12 in 2026, while RK3688 is priced at $24–29, forming a “high-low tier” combination to avoid revenue gaps caused by customer switching. The company has clearly committed to supplying RK3588 until 2030, locking in long-cycle demand from industrial customers.
(4) Platform Moat: Toolchain, Software Stack, and Ecological Positioning
1. Unified AI SDK: RKNN-Toolkit 4.0 supports both RK182X and RK3688, allowing a single line of code to switch between INT4/INT8/FP16; it includes a built-in Transformer acceleration library, enabling one-click quantization for Llama-2, Qwen, and Baichuan.
2. Hardware IP Reuse: The NPU microarchitecture of RK182X is derived from RK3688, allowing seamless migration of customer models between the co-processor and flagship chip, lowering the upgrade threshold from “entry-level to high-end”.
3. Ecological Positioning: Rockchip has partnered with over 50 algorithm vendors, ODMs, and automotive manufacturers to establish the “RockAI Edge Ecological Alliance”, aiming to pre-install over 100 scenario-based models by 2026, forming a “chip + model + terminal” flywheel that raises the entry cost for competitors.
(5) From “Selling Chips” to “Selling Computing Power Platforms”
The market previously viewed Rockchip as a “cyclical stock for Android tablets”; with the cash visibility of RK182X and the platform elevation of RK3688, the company is being revalued as a “provider of edge computing infrastructure in China”.
(6) Risks and Monitoring Indicators
1. Production Capacity: If 4 nm capacity is occupied by mobile phone customers, the launch time of RK3688 may be delayed by 1–2 quarters;
2. Pricing: If Qualcomm and MediaTek engage in price wars in the mid-to-low-end AIoT market, it may compress RK3588’s profit margins;
3. Ecology: The ARM PC ecosystem is fragmented; if Microsoft/Google slow down support for ARM desktop systems, shipments of RK3688’s Chromebooks/thin clients may fall below expectations.
Investors should closely monitor four indicators: monthly shipment volume of RK182X, yield rate of RK3688 tape-out, number of pre-installed models in the RockAI alliance, and inventory turnover days of RK3588.
Conclusion
Rockchip’s “dual-wheel drive” is not merely a simple product overlay, but rather a strategy that transforms the existing market into a fertile field for repeated harvesting through the use of “co-processors”, while establishing a higher peak in new tracks with the “flagship chip”. While most domestic chip companies are still entangled in the question of “who to replace”, Rockchip has already answered a more fundamental question: how to turn the “computing power pain points” of fragmented IoT into sustainable platform value. The combination of RK182X and RK3688 may be the first principle answer for Chinese AIoT chip companies to achieve billions in revenue.