(Reuters) – Chip designer MediaTek Inc on Thursday launched a brand new 5G smartphone chip that it hopes might be utilized in premium-priced Android smartphones, a market Qualcomm Inc at present dominates.
The Hsinchu, Taiwan-based firm stated its new Dimensity 9000 chip would be the world’s first to make use of its manufacturing accomplice Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s “N4” chipmaking course of, which helps makes chips smaller and quicker. MediaTek stated it should even be the primary smartphone chip to characteristic a robust new computing core from Arm Ltd referred to as the Cortex X2.
Together with Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, MediaTek is one in all solely three corporations on this planet that makes 5G smartphone chips. The fourth main participant – Huawei Applied sciences Co Ltd, which additionally made its personal telephones – was compelled out of the market by U.S. sanctions.
Huawei’s exit set off a scramble by Android smartphone makers to seize market share vacated by the Chinese language model. MediaTek already counts lots of the contenders for that market share, akin to Xiaomi Corp, Oppo and Vivo as clients, however lots of these manufacturers use MediaTek for his or her low and mid-tier units and depend on Qualcomm for higher-end fashions.
David Ku, MediaTek’s chief monetary officer, stated the 9000 chip was the primary in what might be a sequence of chips aimed toward persuading these clients to change to utilizing MediaTek of their flagship units.
“We have to have a really sturdy military to march into the section,” Ku informed Reuters. “One product isn’t sufficient – that is our start line.”
MediaTek hit $10 billion in income for the primary time final 12 months, and Ku stated it expects to hit $17 billion in income this 12 months. He stated that whereas 4G smartphone chips generally bought for $10, 5G chips can promote for $30 to even $50.
“The No. 1 driving issue is absolutely the a lot larger (common promoting value) as a result of 4G to 5G transition,” Ku stated.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Enhancing by Dan Grebler)
