Qualcomm seems to have been dethroned as the number one smartphone chip supplier in the world, now that last year’s numbers have come out. According to an Omdia report (noted by DigiTimes), MediaTek—a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company—managed to ship out 351.8 million units during the whole of 2020, overtaking the king of Snapdragon for the first time ever.
Global smartphone chip market 2020 vs. 2019 (image courtesy – Counterpoint Research)
Xiaomi was MediaTek’s biggest customer last year, ordering 63.7 million units, with Oppo coming in second with 55.3 million. Samsung, however, has the biggest year-over-year growth in MediaTek, increasing its purchases 254.5% year-over-year for a total of 43.3 million shipments last year.
Low-end and mid/low-end devices were popular with buyers. MediaTek’s ability to (present) an alternative to Qualcomm chips in this price segment helped the company grow. —Li
The majority of the system-on-a-chip company’s success comes thanks to China and India, the biggest consumers of the aforementioned mid-range MediaTek-powered phones. Zaker Li, a senior Omdia analyst, has stated that the key to MediaTek’s success last year was its key price segments balancing budget with quality, to which many turned as the smartphone market began its recovery in the second half of 2020 in the wake of the pandemic.
