Chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) on Thursday released a new 5G smartphone chip that it hopes will be used in premium-priced Android smartphones, a market Qualcomm Inc currently dominates.
The Hsinchu-based company said its new Dimensity 9000 chip will be the world’s first to use its manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) “N4” chipmaking process, which helps makes chips that are smaller and faster. MediaTek said it would be the first smartphone chip to feature a powerful new computing core from Arm Ltd called the Cortex X2.
Along with Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, MediaTek is one of only three firms in the world that makes 5G smartphone chips. The fourth major player — Huawei Technologies Co Ltd — was forced out of the market by US sanctions.
Photo: Reuters
Huawei’s exit set off a scramble by Android smartphone makers to capture market share vacated by the Chinese brand. MediaTek already counts many of the contenders for that market share, such as Xiaomi Corp, Oppo and Vivo as customers, but many of those brands use MediaTek for their low and mid-tier devices, and rely on Qualcomm for higher-end models.
Media-Tek chief financial officer David Ku (顧大為) said that the 9000 chip was the first in what is to be a series of chips aimed at persuading those customers to switch to using MediaTek in their flagship devices.
“We need to have a very strong army to march into the segment,” Ku said. “One product is not enough. This is our starting point.”
MediaTek hit US$10 billion in revenue for the first time last year, and Ku said it expects to hit US$17 billion this year, adding that 5G chips can sell for up to US$50.
“The No. 1 driving factor is really the much higher [average selling price] due to the 4G to 5G transition,” Ku said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by