14 DAY TRIAL // While Qualcomm was until recently the chipmaker dominating the global markets, it looks like 2020 has produced a major switch of places, with MediaTek recently managing to secure the leading spot.
In other words, MediaTek has become the world’s number one chipmaker, with data shared by Omdia for Digitimes revealing the company managed to ship no less than 351.8 million smartphone chips last year. This figure accounts for 27.2 percent of the market, so MediaTek managed to increase in just one year from 17.2 percent share.
Unsurprisingly, the boom happened at a time when the demand for chips was simply skyrocketing.
The global health issue has generated a surprising boom in demand for chipsets, especially as people moved from the standard office to an ad-hoc workplace at their homes. So sales of new devices, such as tablets, smartphones, and PCs increased as well, in return increasing the demand for chipsets.
More orders from top clients
Needless to say, MediaTek’s impressive achievement was fueled by bigger sales recorded by its clients, including the world’s largest phone makers.
For example, Xiaomi increased its orders for MediaTek chips by as much as 223 percent versus 2019, while OPPO, which was the second-largest customer last year, installed MediaTek chips on 55.3 million devices.
Counterpoint said in December that MediaTek’s increase was fueled by the focus on mid-end devices, Huawei’s US ban, and its collaboration with Samsung, Xiaomi, and Honor.
“The share of MediaTek chipsets in Xiaomi has increased by more than three times since the same period last year. MediaTek was also able to leverage the gap created due to the US ban on Huawei. Affordable MediaTek chips fabricated by TSMC became the first option for many OEMs to quickly fill the gap left by Huawei’s absence. Huawei had also previously purchased a significant amount of chipsets ahead of the ban,” Counterpoint explained at that time.