MediaTek beats Qualcomm and becomes the world’s largest smartphone chipset supplier, Huawei played key role

MediaTek, the world’s one of the biggest smartphone chipmaker company has now grabbed the top spot in the industry by capturing the number one spot by defeating Qualcomm for the first time.

According to the latest data coming from Omdia, MediaTek has shipped 351.8 million units of chips in 2020, which was 238 million units in 2019. MediaTek’s shipment increased by 113.8 million units or 47.8% on year in 2020, with a 27.2% market share compared to 17.2% in 2019.

This is the first time when MediaTek has throned as the biggest smartphone chipset supplier by dethroning Qualcomm for the first rank.

In terms of customers, China’s Xiaomi became the biggest user of the MediaTek chipsets with a purchase of 63.7 million smartphone units powered by MediaTek chips, compared to 19.7 million a year earlier and a direct increase of 223.3% on year in 2020.

In the list, the South Korean company, Samsung has also increased its purchase of MediaTek chipset as there are 43.3 million powered Samsung phones were sold in 2020.

However, there’s one company that has played a major role in turning down the tables for Qualcomm, which is the Chinese tech giant Huawei. Following the U.S. ban, Huawei started using MediaTek chips, which led other smartphone makers to diversify their supply chain and prohibited depending on a single supplier.

“Mostly important for MediaTek’s growth in 2020 was in key price segments for MediaTek as the world was impacted by the pandemic in the first half of 2020 and the smartphone market recovered in the second half of the year,” said Zaker Li, senior analyst of wireless devices components & devices at Omdia. “Low-end and mid/low-end devices were popular with buyers. MediaTek’s ability to compete presents an alternative to Qualcomm chips in this price segment helped the company grow.”

“In 2021, MediaTek is expected to extend last year’s lead trend on smartphone chipset shipment,” Li continued. “On one hand there will be more chipset outsourcing demand from the New honor and Huawei, because of Kirin chipset will disappear in the market. On other hand, the future growth of the smartphone market is in the emerging market, more low-end smartphone need cheap smartphone, MediaTek fits that need.”

(Source – Digitimes)