Black Smudge Chips

I cant seem to find an answer on these. Some lower grade boards have a black, chip like, smudge on them. My guess is there is some sort of chip equivalent buried inside of it. I doubt there is any value but I'm curious if anyone knows what exactly they are. Here are two pictures, one of a stopwatch board and one of a remote board. Both have these smudge chips.

Hi
Mech was right about that being an IC but that type of IC is a silicone chip bonded directly to the traces on the board. In other words, no gold bond wires like a black dip (dual inline package) has. Low grade!

I've seen similar black spots on the display circuit boards from digital phones. I removed one of the black spots and found what looked like a gold square circuit and all of the traces in the board were connected to it. Hard to explain. I have a picture of a board with one of those black spots on it. It's on my thread called "Some of my ewaste finds.