MediaTek Inc (聯發科), which supplies handset chips to the world’s biggest telecom, China Mobile (中國移動), is expected to take half of China’s smartphone chip market next year, benefiting from the quick uptake of its new octa-core chips used in high-end and mid-range smartphones, Daiwa Capital Markets forecast yesterday.
The gain in market share would help MediaTek widen the gap in its leadership of the Chinese market, the world’s largest. This year, MediaTek is expected to seize a 48 percent share of the Chinese market, Daiwa said.
Meanwhile, major rival Qualcomm Inc is expected to see its market share shrink to 25 percent next year from this year’s 30 percent due to a lack of competitive products in the second half of this year, Daiwa analyst Eric Chen (陳慧明) said in a report.
“On a recent trip to China, we got the impression that MediaTek’s octa-core smartphone IC had been well received. Given this, octa-core ICs could become mainstream [smartphone chips] in China by 2014,” Chen said.
As the octa-core Cortex A7 MT6592 delivers an impressive clock speed of between 1.7 gigahertz and 2 gigahertz and has low power consumption, the chip would help Chinese smartphone makers gain access to the mid-range and high-end large-screen market segment, as well as helping MediaTek boost its global orders, Chen said.
MediaTek said last month that it plans to ramp up production of the new octa-core chip next quarter.
The firm’s new cost-efficient quad-core smartphone processors, code-named the MT6582 and the MT6588, would also help the chipmaker expand its market share in China, Chen said.
The quad-core chips, one for low-end smartphones and another for mid-range models, are expected to launch next quarter, Chen said.
MediaTek is expected to grow its handset shipments by about 44 percent to 300 million units next year, compared with this year’s 208 million units, Chen said.
MediaTek also supplies handset chips to China’s Xiaomi Corp (小米), Lenovo Group (聯想) and ZTE Corp (中興).
This quarter, MediaTek is expected to grow its revenue by 16 percent quarter-on-quarter, a faster pace than the company’s forecast of between 5 percent and 13 percent growth, to between NT$349 billion and NT$376 billion, Chen said.
Net income is expected to increase 24 percent this quarter to NT$8.34 billion, Chen said.
Chen retained his “buy” rating on MediaTek, with a target price of NT$430. That implies a 15 percent upside from the stock’s closing price of NT$374 yesterday.
Poland is betting on a flood of investments and technology transfers from Taiwanese companies to reengineer its US$1 trillion economy. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said yesterday that Poland will no longer be “just an assembly hub” as it pursues further investments from the likes of Foxconn Technology Group (富士康). The firm, whose full name is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), last month agreed to build electric vehicles (EVs) in the European Union nation and now could be a partner in a semiconductor venture, he said. The government’s aim is to boost manufacturing and the country’s high-tech chops in an era
Taiwan remained the sixth-largest net creditor nation in the world last year, despite a fall of more than 10 percent in its net international investment position (NIIP) over the year, the central bank said yesterday. The NIIP is the difference between a country’s external financial assets and its external financial liabilities. Taiwan’s external financial assets hit US$3.27 trillion at the end of last year, up US$275.75 billion or 9.2 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said in its annual NIIP report. The growth largely reflected an increase in holdings of overseas marketable securities by residents in Taiwan, as well as a
RESTRICTION BREACH: ASML said that it denies ‘unfounded rumors regarding non-compliance with export controls concerning China,’ and enforces controls strictly US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick in a series of recent meetings outlined concerns to Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML Holding NV’s senior leaders that one of its top-of-the-line machines might have made its way into China, in violation of US-led export restrictions. In the meetings, Lutnick expressed concern to ASML executives over the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, people familiar with the talks said. EUV systems are used by firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to manufacture processors for the likes of Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc. ASML has never been allowed to ship them to China because of curbs
BAD FAITH LITIGATION? The two companies, owned by a California-based private equity firm, could be seeking licensing fees or a settlement payout with the suit Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) Director-General Liao Cheng-wei (廖承威) said yesterday he suspected that two firms suing contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for patent infringement are “patent trolls.” A patent troll refers to a company that buys patents not for manufacturing products, but to sue other companies for compensation, accusing them of using its patents. Patent trolls, formally called Non-Practicing Entities or Patent Assertion Entities, were responsible for more than 50 percent of lawsuits in the US last year, costing targeted businesses tens of billions of US dollars a year, according to the US-based LegalCharity Web site. Asked whether
RSS