Mediatek is now for the first time in its history the largest player in the smartphone chipset market.
The Tawainese-based tech semiconductor company has been in a game for a while but its performance was for a long time shadowed by Qualcomm, a San Diego-based American multinational corporation.
However, before we even proceed with this new development, what the heck is a smartphone chipset?
Well just like your laptop has a CPU (probably an intel one), your smartphone also needs one. A smartphone chipset is by a basic definition, the ‘brains’ of a smartphone.
Qualcomm and Mediatek are the two companies that run the smartphone chipset market. Qualcomm has relatively higher brand equity than Mediatek and hence it’s often the darling brand for most smartphone manufacturers and its products are often found in most premium smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S21 series.
However, the tide appears to have changed and according to recent shipment reports by Omdia, Mediatek shipped 351.8 million units and with this, it now holds 27.2% of the market. This is compared to 238 million units the company shipped in 2019 and the 17.2% market share the company held.
Xiaomi, OPPO, and Realme are among the top three brands that fueled the growth. With the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for budget smartphones was at an all-time high and coincidentally Mediatek is the main supplier for budget smartphone chipsets.
With the world economy still in the nascent stage of recovery from the covid-19 pandemic, more people are likely to defer the purchase of premium smartphones for affordable units. Therefore, Mediatek should be able to maintain the lead for a while.
However, an increase in the demand for smartphone chipsets doesn’t necessarily imply an increase in the demand for budget smartphones. There could be a probability that budget smartphone manufacturers are creating a stockpile of the chipsets to counter future supply shocks.
True to this, a previous report by Omdia showed that the demand for iPhones was at an all-time high in 2020.
Kevin is a tech enthusiast and the lead writer at MobiTrends.co.ke. He has been writing about smartphones and tech related topics since October 2012. About Us | Contact Us
