MediaTek to Set Foot into the US Market with Low-priced Branded Offerings

According to Taiwan's MIC (Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute), an ICT industry research institute based in Taipei, smartphone application IC market share by system technology remained relatively the same compared to the first quarter of 2013. LTE's (Long Term Evolution) share of the market sustained at the same level as the previous quarter as LTE application ICs have been embraced in HTC flagship models shipped to the US and European markets and in Blackberry Q5, which just began shipments in the second quarter. This has compensated the declining iPhone 5 shipments for Taiwanese manufacturers.

Looking at the competition among mobile communication IC suppliers, other than Samsung and Apple who have incorporated IC solutions into their offerings, Qualcomm has dominated the high-end mobile communication IC market in 2013. The entry-level and mid-range market segments are shared by MediaTek and Qualcomm. The industry still highlights on products that integrate application and baseband ICs.

With its competitive cost-performance ratio, reference design, and ability to accelerate time-to-market for new products, MediaTek has a stronghold in emerging markets like China and India. To prevent MediaTek's share from growing further in emerging markets, international brands have launched their low-priced IC offerings for the Chinese market, for instance Marvell's PXA1088 IC, which has specs similar to that of MediaTek's MT6589 and supports TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) technology, to help Marvell to compete directly with MediaTek in the entry-level and mid-range segments of the Chinese smartphone application IC market.

In the face of increasingly fierce competition from international brands, MediaTek has chosen to bring the battlefield from emerging markets to the US market through its collaboration with Alcatel One Touch - an international mobile phone brand owned by Chinese TCL communications. MediaTek and Alcatel One Touch joined hands to launch two new smarpthones, the One Touch Fierce and One Touch Evolve, which run on MediaTek MT6589M and MT6575 chipsets with a price tag of US$170 and US$100, respectively. Combining the low-priced strategy with a branded product, MediaTek aims to step into the US market.

Taiwanese Smartphone Communications IC Market Volume, 1Q 2011 - 2Q 2014

Source: MIC, October 2013

To see more about this report, please visit: The Taiwanese Smartphone Application IC Market, 3Q 2013.

For future receipt of press releases, or more information about MIC research findings, please contact MIC Public Relations.

About MIC

Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), based in Taipei, Taiwan, was founded in 1987. MIC is Taiwan's premier IT industry research and consulting firm providing intelligence, in-depth analysis, and strategic consulting services on global IT product and technology trends, focusing on markets and industries in Asia-Pacific. MIC is part of the Institute for Information Industry. https://mic.iii.org.tw/english