Industry Research: $50 smartphone to be launched by the end of the year

MediaTek (2454) announced the acquisition of F-MStar (3697) and attracted the attention of IC design industry. This morning, Gartner Semiconductor Industry Research Director Hong Cenwei analyzed the communication IC market and said that in the future, the four major IC design manufacturers in the communication field will be dominated by Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel and MediaTek. He also expected that due to the difference in consumer demand in emerging countries, low-priced smartphones priced at US$50 will be launched in the market at the end of the year.

Hong Cenwei pointed out that the current penetration rate of smartphones in the world is about 30%, of which high-end products account for about 20%. However, the usage habits of mobile phone consumers in emerging markets and North America are different. Among them, emerging markets and the Chinese market focus on the use of mobile applications, which is different from the sending and receiving of emails and Internet access in Europe and the United States. It is expected that the low-priced smartphone market will grow rapidly.

He expects that low-priced smartphones worth US$50 will be available on the market as early as the end of the year because they exclude high-cost components such as 3G and GPS in their design, and market demand will emerge in early next year.

Regarding MediaTek's future, Hong Cenwei believes that MediaTek has successively launched MT6573, 6575 to 6577. Among them, the newly launched 6577 will be a good weapon for MediaTek and will help MediaTek's gross profit margin and performance in the second half of the year.

As for the benefits of MediaTek's merger with Morningstar, he is also optimistic about the complementary benefits of the two parties. From the perspective of customer base, MediaTek has provided very good service and cooperation to "copycat customers" in the past, while Morningstar has more contacts with first-tier manufacturers in the TV chip sector. After the merger, the two parties can achieve a 1 plus 1 greater than 2 effect in different fields. It is estimated that the benefits of the merger will be in the second half of next year.

But he also believes that the biggest challenge for MediaTek and MStar is still retaining talent, and the two companies' biggest effort now is to meet employee expectations.

Overall, Hong Cenwei expects that the communications IC market will be dominated by Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel and MediaTek in the future. Among them, Intel is considered the best designer in the world. In the past two years, it has begun to focus on mobile phone processors. It is expected to launch 22nm products next year and move to 1Xnm process the year after, which will be consistent with PC processors.