The battle for the middle-range is between Qualcomm and Mediatek. Both chip makers have new processors for that category: Qualcomm has the 14nm Snapdragon 450 and MediaTek has the 16nm Helio P23. To win clients, Qualcomm has reduced the price of the SDM450 to $10.50, a move that may force MediaTek to do the same.
Lowering the price isn’t easy for MediaTek. Samsung makes the Snapdragon 450 for Qualcomm and report says it has offered Qualcomm a wafer price of $2500. MediaTek on the other hand is charged over $3500 per wafer by TSMC.
Sources say the Helio P23 was previously priced at about $15. To secure orders from its-China based clients, the price was brought down to between $11 and $12. Now that the Snapdragon 450 is selling for $10.50, MediaTek, may have to lower prices further to keep its clients.
The Helio P23 is scheduled for a Q4 launch and it already has orders from OPPO, Vivo, Gionee and Meizu. MediaTek targets 5 to 6 million shipments per month for the chip.
READ MORE: Meizu Likely To Abandon Samsung in Favor Of Mediatek & Qualcomm Chips: Analyst
The Helio P23 is an octa-core cortex-A53 processor with a PowerVR 7XTP GPU. It will have support for dual cameras and LPPDR4X RAM and should start appearing in devices before the end of the year.
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