Published in Mobiles

MediaTek aims to ship 800+ million SoCs in 2015

by on09 June 2015


CFO and President confirms

We had a chance to meet with some key people from MediaTek, including President CJ Ching-Jiang Hsieh and the Corporate Vice President CFO and Spokesman David Ku.

They shared some interesting numbers with us. We heard that MediaTek aims to ship up to 60 million tablet SoCs this year, more than 450 million smartphone SoCs and 350 million chips for feature phones. This is a huge increase from last year and this is a clear indication that MediaTek is becoming a major player and a competitor to Qualcomm. Last year, according to company sources, MediaTek managed to ship 650 million chips for smartphone and feature phones. This year it looks like they will sell at least a 100 million more.  

Both President CJ Hsieh and CFO David Ku mentioned that China is a huge growth opportunity for the company. The market in China is exploding and in a very short period of time people went from no phones to feature phones with no internet. In a matter of just a few years, people upgraded from feature phones to smartphones with internet connectivity. Now MediaTek sees a new trend that - early smartphone adopters in China that used to enjoy 2G internet speeds now want 3G or even 4G speeds. Most people are leaping straight from 2G to 4G, which is unique to the Chinese market. MediaTek wants to continue growing in China market and has some big plans

David made a nice analogy about the different values and needs in different markets. He had a great example that a farmer in China with a phone has better a chance of competing and placing his products to the market on a right time. Some of these people need days to get to the market and now, with the power of a phone call or internet search, they can save their self the trouble of travelling in case there is no demand for their product. Adding even 2G internet on feature phones makes a huge difference, and of course more developed parts of China wants 3G and 4G, something that creates a huge wave of phone sales in China with each new product generation. 

Next year, MediaTek expects to ship more SoCs for smartphones, as most Asian markets including China are still in the process middle of upgrading from feature phones to smartphones, and why not go for 4G capable phones immediately. We reviewed a couple of MediaTek powered Mlais phones with 4G earlier this year, priced at about $150, but even cheaper models with 4G and 64-bit MediaTek processors are already available.

Last modified on 09 June 2015
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