Shares of MediaTek Inc (聯發科) rallied 4.89 percent yesterday after the chip designer confirmed that telecoms operator Vodafone’s latest feature phone — which has Facebook built-in and targets India and other emerging markets — uses its new 2.75-generation chip.
The deal represented another order win from a global telecom operator for the nation’s biggest handset chip designer. After its successful venture into China, the Hsinchu-based company is seeking to diversify its clientele as it faces increasing competition from new rivals.
MediaTek said it would also start shipping its first 3G handset chips later this quarter as scheduled.
The company hopes to duplicate its success in the 2G feature phone market by helping “customers hit their operational targets in all markets [through its new chips for] 3G phones and smartphones,” company president Hsieh Ching-jiang (謝清江) said in a statement on Thursday.
The announcement came one day after rival Mstar Semiconductor Inc (Cayman) (開曼晨星半導體) said it had landed new orders from Chinese customers by offering new chips for high-end feature phones.
MediaTek’s new 2.75G chip has been well-received by Vodafone and other telecoms operators as well as handset makers, Hsieh said.
Vodafone, which has 382 million subscribers around the world, uses the 2.75G chip in its new feature phone — the Vodafone 555 Blue — which has a built-in Opera Mini 5 Web browser, Facebook and other features to make social networking easier.
Vodafone 555 Blue was designed to target users in emerging markets and developing countries like India, MediaTek said.
Forecasting growth for MediaTek, UBS Securities said in a research note yesterday that shipment growth would mainly come “from Lenovo’s (聯想) demand in smartphone and shipments outside China.”
The stock price of MediaTek jumped NT$14.50 to end at NT$311 yesterday, marking its highest since July 4. Mstar’s share price climbed 3.13 percent to NT$165.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
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