According to Counterpoint Research reports, the Taiwanese chip manufacturer Mediatek dethroned Qualcomm by selling the most smartphone chips in the third quarter of 2020 — making it the world’s largest manufacturer of smartphone SoCs.
According to the analysis, Mediatek is dominating the sector with a market share of 31 percent against Qualcomm with 29 percent in the third quarter of the year. Qualcomm, however, remains the largest manufacturer of 5G-capable chips, specifically with a market share of a whopping 39 percent.
Compared to the previous year, Mediatek was able to grow strongly in Latin America and India in particular, but also in the Middle East and Africa. In addition, due to the trade war between China and the USA, Huawei can no longer have SoC produced by the world’s largest contract manufacturer TSMC, and alternative options such as the Chinese foundry SMIC were paralyzed by the Trump administration.
As a result, Huawei could no longer commission the chip subsidiary HiSilicon to manufacture its own smartphone SoCs but had to buy them. Mediatek was chosen as the partner, specifically the 5G designs of the Dimensity series.
A look at Mediatek’s quarterly figures confirms this — in Q3 / 2020, sales rose by a whopping 46 percent compared to the previous year, while profits almost doubled by 93 percent. According to Mediatek, this is due to the increased market share for smartphone chips, which points to a new major partner, i.e., Huawei.
