MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s biggest handset chip supplier, yesterday announced a partnership with PC vendor Acer Inc (宏碁) to accelerate the development of emerging wearable and cloud-computing products powered by MediaTek’s new chip.
To differentiate itself from other PC brands, Acer has launched a new “Build Your Own Cloud” (BYOC) service to build private remote data storage for customers. Acer aims to build a BYOC ecosystem by soliciting its customers and industry partners to join in.
“We are one of Acer’s key [BYOC] partners in the ecosystem,” MediaTek chairman and CEO Tsai Ming-kai (蔡明介) told a media briefing yesterday. “Our Aster solution provides a good platform for [Acer] to enable connectivity at home and in the office.”
Photo: Cho Yi-chun, Taipei Times
The Aster chip is a new processor, designed by MediaTek for wearable devices and the Internet of Things (IOT).
“We expect the growth of smartphones and tablets to decelerate over the next few years, while IOT [shipments] will grow significantly,” Tsai said.
As far as MediaTek is concerned, Acer’s cloud platform offers a good testing ground for the chipmaker to manage massive volumes of data and simultaneously enable new applications of the new chip on its new developer’s system, Linkit, for wearable devices and the Internet of Things.
MediaTek said the Internet of Things market is totally different from the smartphone market, given its great diversity. As a result, the company would need an ecosystem, or an open platform, to foster the growth of the Internet of Things.
In the preliminary stage, MediaTek targets wearable devices and smart home applications to develop Internet of Things products.
MediaTek built a strong position in the mobile phone market by providing turnkeys or total solutions, for mobile phone makers — mostly white-box brands in China.
The company started providing semi-turnkey solutions for clients to develop wearable devices and the Internet of Things, and it expects the business to grow over time, Tsai said.
When asked if wearable devices would replace smartphones, Tsai said he did not expect that to happen in the next three to five years.
Commenting on speculation that MediaTek could be a potential buyer of rival Broadcom Corp’s cellular baseband business, Tsai said he could not comment on that.
However, Tsai said that Broadcom’s announcement has started to have an impact on MediaTek’s business, as some major global telecoms have approached MediaTek to use its mobile phone chips right after Broadcom decided to exit the mobile phone chip market.
“We are confident that in the end, MediaTek will be one of the surviving two or three [cellular chip suppliers] after industry consolidation,” Tsai said.
Tsai said the company has formed close partnerships with the world’s main telecoms, including Telefonica and Vodafone, and that MediaTek’s Long-Term Evolution (LTE) chips have earned reliability qualifications from Vodafone.
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