MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it plans to invest more than NT$200 billion (US$6.15 billion) over the next five years on new technologies, including 5G technology that promises ultra-fast data transmission.
In the past three years, MediaTek has invested in autonomous vehicle, drone and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and the company will continue to invest in emerging technologies, such as deep learning and virtual reality (VR), chairman and chief executive officer Tsai Ming-kai (蔡明介) told a media briefing after the company’s annual general meeting in Hsinchu.
Tsai said that MediaTek, the world’s No. 3 fabless chip supplier, has to explore new areas for growth, as existing markets are saturating.
Photo: CNA
“Boosting new growth from existing products and searching for new growth opportunities are equally important,” Tsai said, adding that 5G would be a growth opportunity in 2020.
MediaTek has spent NT$350 billion on R&D over the past two decades, Tsai said.
The company has 15,000 employees around the world, including 9,000 in Taiwan.
The company shipped 150 million long-term evolution (LTE) handset chips last year, a fivefold growth from a year ago, with about 40 percent of mobile phones made by Chinese vendors powered by MediaTek’s chips, doubling that figure from 2014, it said.
Commenting on the global smartphone chip market, Tsai said the issue of short supply of chips will remain in the third quarter, after a powerful earthquake rocked southern Taiwan in February, which disrupted production lines of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), which makes chips for MediaTek.
However, Tsai said MediaTek will continue to post high growth in sales in the second half of this year on the back of strong demand for smartphone chips.
Since developing nations have stepped up the deployment of 4G LTE network and Chinese telecommunication operators are accelerating the migration of 2G and 3G technologies to 4G, the company will see decent growth in revenue this year, he said.
Early this year, MediaTek set an annual growth in revenue target of 10 percent for this year, from last year’s NT$213.26 billion.
MediaTek yesterday reiterated its call on the government to conditionally relax Chinese investments in local chip designers, adding that companies in the local semiconductor industry have generally agreed that the government should allow Chinese investors to buy a minor stake in local chip designers.
The relaxation would give “strategic flexibility” to Taiwanese firms, MediaTek spokesman David Ku (顧大為) said.
Taiwanese firms could lose their competitive edge if the restrictions remain in place, he said, as global rivals have been enjoying such flexibility to expand into the Chinese market, the world’s largest consumer electronics market.
“We are not asking for a full opening up,” Ku said.
The government can set a limit on the number of board seats that can be held by Chinese investors to reduce the risk of losing company ownerships, he said.
Meanwhile, shareholders yesterday approved the company's plan to distribute a cash dividend of NT$11 per share, representing a 4.92 percent dividend yield compared with the company’s closing price of NT$223.5 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
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