MediaTek may overtake others in the mobile phone processor market

According to Taiwan media reports, industry insiders pointed out that mainland China has officially issued 5G licenses to the three major operators. MediaTek has entered the 5G market by launching the first mobile phone processor that integrates 5G baseband chips, which will be crucial to MediaTek's future development.

In May this year, MediaTek released a new 5G mobile platform at the Taipei International Computer Show. This multi-mode 5G system-on-chip (SoC) is manufactured using a 7nm process. In addition to ARM's latest Cortex-A77 CPU, Mali-G77 GPU and MediaTek's most advanced independent AI processing unit APU, it also has a built-in 5G baseband chip Helio M70.

For other processors, to connect to the 5G network, they must "plug in" a 5G baseband chip. For example, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 processor plugs in the Snapdragon X55 baseband chip, Huawei HiSilicon's Kirin 980 processor must be combined with the Balong 5000 baseband chip, and Samsung's Exynos 9820 also requires the Exynos 5100 baseband chip.

The above chip manufacturers are also working on integrating 5G baseband chips into processors. Although Huawei HiSilicon said it would launch related products in September, the company, like Samsung, has never sold mobile phone processors to the public. As for Qualcomm, it is expected that its products will not be officially unveiled and supplied until the first quarter of next year. MediaTek's first launch has obviously seized the opportunity.

Industry insiders pointed out that this will accelerate MediaTek's revival in the field of mobile phone processors and have the opportunity to become an important beneficiary after the opening of 5G licenses in mainland China.

In the past two years, MediaTek has been holding back on mobile phone processors, mainly because it temporarily shelved the development of high-end processors, and its processors did not support the LTE Cat7 technology required by China Mobile. Now, MediaTek's first mobile phone processor with integrated 5G baseband chips has just caught up with the release of 5G photography in China, and is expected to achieve a curve overtaking.

Industry insiders further pointed out that although the processor of the "external" 5G baseband chip can also connect to the 5G network normally, it will bring problems such as higher power consumption, instability and increased mobile phone costs. Therefore, integrating the 5G baseband chip into the mobile phone processor has become the best solution. Currently, MediaTek is the only company in the market that has such a 5G mobile platform, which naturally has a certain advantage. When many mobile phone manufacturers develop 5G mobile phones, they will also give priority to referring to or choosing MediaTek's solutions.

The industry insider even boldly predicted that within the next year, MediaTek will be on par with Qualcomm in the 5G mobile phone processor market in mainland China.