The battle for high-end mobile phone chips is getting thicker

Competition in the mobile phone industry is fierce, and all major manufacturers want to take the lead in the market and gain more market share. This is true for mobile phones, and it is also true for mobile phone chip manufacturers. On December 1, Qualcomm released a new generation of flagship chip, Snapdragon 8 Gen1, at the 2021 Qualcomm Snapdragon Technology Summit. This new product, which uses a new brand naming scheme for the first time, is also seen as the successor to Snapdragon 888 and will be installed in the top-of-the-line new phones in the global Android camp next year. Just a week before the release of Snapdragon 8 Gen1, MediaTek also launched its flagship chip Dimensity 9000 in a high-profile manner. This new product, which also uses a 4nm process, comes from TSMC and is seen as a product for MediaTek to challenge Qualcomm's leading position in high-end chips.

The release of two flagship chips at the end of the year officially brought the battle of the high-end 5G SoC market into a two-horse showdown. According to the global research organization Counterpoint, in the global 5G SoC market in 2021, Qualcomm will still lead with a 30% share, while MediaTek will closely follow with a 28% share. In this context, the industry generally believes that the duel of the new generation of flagship chips will determine the seats of the two giants in the global market next year.

Domestic mobile phones compete for the first launch of Snapdragon 8

With the official release of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen1 flagship chip, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have also started to preheat their new products. The most interesting ones are Motorola and Xiaomi, one was the mobile phone overlord ten years ago, and the other is the current mobile phone king. In order to compete for the so-called "first launch right", even their respective CEOs did not hesitate to personally participate in the competition in order to obtain the traffic brought by users' attention to the latest chips.

First, Lei Jun said at the Qualcomm Technology Summit that Xiaomi Mi 12 will be the first to launch the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 processor. After that, someone immediately expressed dissatisfaction. Chen Jin, general manager of Lenovo China's mobile phone business department, also posted on Weibo, seemingly responding from a distance, saying, "Regarding the first launch of Snapdragon 8, Motorola will not make a PPT release on December 9, and the real first sale will be on December 15." Subsequently, OPPO, vivo, realme, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, Meizu, ZTE, Nubia, Black Shark and other manufacturers all posted posters of Snapdragon 8 and got the so-called "first launch" fruit.

Qualcomm is just happy behind the fact that these domestic mobile phones are rushing to be the first to launch the chip. This proves that although MediaTek Dimensity 9000 is coming in with great momentum, it has not shaken the status of Qualcomm's flagship chip at all. After all, no manufacturers are rushing to launch the Dimensity 9000.

The situation on the supply chain side is not optimistic either. As more and more smart devices are manufactured, in addition to mobile phone manufacturers, many industries are scrambling for chip supplies. As early as last year, an authoritative research institution predicted that competition on the chip side of the entire supply chain will be more intense in 2021. In the financial reports released by various mobile phone manufacturers this year, the problem of chip shortage was mentioned unanimously.

MediaTek is charging ahead without breaking into the battle

There is no doubt that the Dimensity 9000 should be the most amazing flagship chip in MediaTek's history. In this regard, MediaTek President Chen Guanzhou is also full of confidence in the Dimensity 9000: "Our newly released flagship Dimensity 9000 is a very important and milestone product for MediaTek."

The market generally believes that mobile phones using Dimensity 9000 will not be officially launched until next year. However, do domestic mobile phone manufacturers plan to use Dimensity 9000 in the future, especially in high-end products? In this regard, the reporter contacted Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and Honor respectively, and vivo gave a vague response of "stay tuned". In addition, Lu Weibing, President of Xiaomi Group China and General Manager of Redmi Brand, also wrote on Weibo: "Dimensity 9000 is here... What are your expectations for Redmi?"

According to incomplete statistics, other products in MediaTek's Dimensity series, Dimensity 1200, have been installed in mid-to-high-end models such as realme GT Neo, Redmi K40 Game Enhanced Edition, Honor 30, OPPO K9 Pro, and vivo X70. However, these mobile phones priced at around 3,000 yuan do not mean that MediaTek has truly entered the high-end market.

The battle has begun

As the competition between Qualcomm and MediaTek in high-end SoC escalates, the 5G mobile phone market has also clearly felt the signals released by the upstream market. Especially under the strong impact of Apple 13, the battle between Qualcomm and MediaTek is becoming particularly complicated.

According to the latest data released by IDC, global mobile phone shipments fell 6.7% year-on-year in the third quarter of this year, while Apple grew 20.8% against the trend and regained the second place in global sales. "For the Android camp, especially high-end Android phones, the new products launched by Qualcomm and MediaTek based on 4nm are undoubtedly a major positive." Industry insiders said that the emergence of Snapdragon 8 Gen1 and Dimensity 9000 has provided more confidence and possibilities for Android brands to further improve their mid-to-high-end capabilities to seize the market and even compete with Apple.

Back to the Android camp, the competition between Qualcomm and MediaTek for the 5G mobile phone market is becoming increasingly fierce. According to data released by Counterpoint, in the second quarter of this year, in terms of shipments, MediaTek's market share in the global smartphone AP/SoC market reached 38%, higher than Qualcomm's 32%. The agency predicts that by the end of 2021, MediaTek will still rank first with a 37% share, while Qualcomm's market share will be 31%.

However, in terms of revenue, Qualcomm is still the leader in this market. According to a research report by Strategy Analytics, in the second quarter of 2021, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Apple occupied the top three positions in the global smartphone application processor market revenue, with shares of 36%, 29%, and 21%, respectively. "Overall, the competition between MediaTek and Qualcomm in 5G mobile phones will be more intense next year, especially in the competition for flagship phone cooperation customers, which will be the key, and the battle has already begun," said an industry insider.