While MediaTek chipsets have seen a rise in demand, supply constraints and the global semiconductor shortage have made them short in supply. And Now, the company is following other chipmakers and is apparently raising the prices of its processors as well.

According to a UDN report, the Taiwanese chipmaking giant is raising the prices for some of its smartphone chips that are in high demand this month. The bump in prices are as high as 15 percent, so the company is also expected to see stronger performance and higher profits due to the robust momentum. Unfortunately, the company did not offer any comments on its chip price hike, although, sources close to the matter confirmed that MediaTek has raise the prices of smartphone processors.

The sources stated that 4G LTE enabled chips saw a sharp price rise since the primary focus of chipmaker’s is usually the 5G smartphone market. 4G chips now hold a smaller stake in the market but demand for 4G smartphones is still high in markets such as India where 5G networking is still not commercialized. Furthermore, the order of 4G handsets have caused the supply of LTE enabled phones to surpass the demand. Similarly, the brand’s rival, Qualcomm, is also expected to raise the prices of its chipsets, although, this has yet to be confirmed.

The rise in prices of MediaTek processors is as high as 15 percent for 4G chips and 5 percent for 5G enabled chips. The primary reason for the hike in price is due to the increase cost of production from TSMC’s foundry. Previously, the company had also raised the prices of its WiFi chips by about 20 percent as well while we had also reported on other foundries like Samsung raising their prices.

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Honor, the Huawei subsidiary, has just launched the Honor X10. The smartphone is a mid range 5G handset and sported the HiSilicon Kirin 820 SoC. After the launch conference, Zhao Ming, President of Honor’s Business unit, revealed that the company will now be looking towards MediaTek‘s 5G processors for its upcoming and future smartphone launches.

In the post launch interview, the senior executive stated that the Chinese company has had good relations with MediaTek, and seeks to strengthen this cooperation for the foreseeable future. Zhao said that while the Honor X10 featured the company’s proprietary Kirin 820 SoC, the future of the processor family in Honor smartphones is uncertain and that future models will likely ship with 5G chipsets from MediaTek.

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The President believes that 5G networking is the next step towards a new generation of smartphones and that MediaTek with its affordable lineup has helped in bringing the barrier of entry lower than ever before. In other words, the chipmaker has helped make the newer and faster bandwidth more popular with its Dimensity chip series. For those unaware, recent sanctions from the US government has cut off chip supply from TSMC to Huawei, causing the company to look into other alternatives.

Furthermore, Zhao Ming said that MediaTek has been a partner of Honor on numerous occasions for previously launched products and that the future will see wider adoption of their chipsets across the company’s smartphone offerings. The official also stated that these chips will also be directly optimized for Honor’s custom OS and other features to offer the best and consistent user experience to its customers.

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(Via)

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Yesterday, MediaTek officially unveiled the Dimensity 1000 5G chipset, its first high-end SoC since 2017’s Helio X30. The ‘1000’ is the first chip in the brand new Dimensity series that’ll feature 5G SoCs. However, a number of media outlets in China raised questions about the naming strategy of the new chipset.

In the post-launch conference Q&A session, a couple of Chinese media outlets asked whether MediaTek’s Dimensity ‘1000’ has anything to do with the names of the existing competitors from Huawei or Samsung. Huawei’s 5G chip is called Kirin 990 while Samsung’s new chip also gets the Exynos 990 name. So MediaTek was asked whether the new chip was named as the Dimensity 1000 to get some sort of a naming advantage.

However, MediaTek clarified that Dimensity 1000’s name has nothing to do with the competitors in the market. The number 1000 is considered special internally, so it decided to call its new chipset as Dimensity 1000. However, MediaTek added that they believe its new chipset is definitely better than Huawei’s Kirin 990 5G SoC.

MediaTek also clarified that the Dimensity 1000 is the MT6889 model that was seen on AnTuTu yesterday. But in that case, we are unclear of the identity of the MediaTek MT6885 model that was revealed a few months back. It’s probably going to be a variant or another model in the same Dimensity 5G chipset series.

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(Via)

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Taiwanese fabless chipmaker MediaTek has been missing on the flagship chip segment for a long while due to the dominance of Qualcomm in that segment. The company instead shifted its focus to the midrange and budget chip segment and it has been a successful move so far. The company is looking to relaunch its product in the flagship segment with the emerging 5G connectivity.

Already, the company is reportedly set to start shipping its 5G chipset by Q4 2019. The Helio M70 which is MediaTek’s first 5G chipset modem was first announced last year.

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While shifting attention to the flagship segment, the Taiwanese chipmaker isn’t losing sight of its stronghold- the midrange segment. A report from China claims the company is planning to launch another 7nm chipset that would be used on its midrange 5G chipsets. Of course, this will bring more affordable pricing. The report carried by Chinese blog MyDrivers hinted that the architecture should be the same as the MT6885, the same chipset that has an Helio M70 modem. However, the chip said to go by the codename “MT6873” will come with a smaller size and will be more affordable. The company is expected to commence mass production in Q2 2020, which means it could find its way into smartphones by Q3 or Q4 2020. The company expects to ship about 100 million sold chips in 2020 with the upcoming MT6885 and MT6873 5G SoCs expected to account for half of its shipments next year.

Further, the Taiwanese fabless semiconductor giant is expected to switch to TSMC’s 6nm EUV process after it is done with the two chipsets. The 6nm SoC will be the first EUV product for the Taiwanese company. There are four designs in total, all of them with an upgrade of the CPU and the GPU.

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(via)

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