20
Nov
MediaTek Executive Summit 2022 – Coming out party for its “5G Premium” offering and show of confidence
Taiwanese tech giant MediaTek held its yearly executive summit last week in California. It had a bunch of exciting announcements and a set of executive presentations. The most interesting announcement was that of Dimensity 9200, the smartphone SoC, which signaled the arrival of MediaTek in the 5G premium segment. The executive speeches demonstrated MediaTek’s growing confidence in projecting its technology leadership and substantial share in the markets they play.
Announcements:
Dimensity 9200 SoC – This chipset offers a slew of advanced technologies, including the AI Processing Unit with impressive power savings, the world’s first Arm Immortalis-G715 GPU, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, AI-enhanced modem supporting mmWave and Sub 6GHz bands, WiFi7 connectivity, and more. It is fabed using TSMC’s latest 4nm Gen 2 process. You can check out its press release and specifications for more details.
T800 Thin modem – This connectivity chipset offers 7.9 Gbps peak speeds, supports both mmWave and Sub-6GHz, 3GPP Re. 16, 4x carrier aggregation, and other advanced features. It targets Industrial IoT, M2M, always-connected PCs, and other markets beyond smartphones. You can check out its press release and specifications for more details.
Kompanio 520 and Kompanio 528 – These are chipsets supporting entry-level Chromebooks. You can check out their press release for more details.
Pentonic 1000 – This chipset is for the latest smart TVs and media players. You can check out its press release for more details.
Tantra’s take:
Dimensity 9200 is a full-featured premium SoC by any standards. This chipset will be a beast if it performs as claimed in the specs. With that performance and their excellent relationship with Chinese OEMs, MediaTek may finally have a chance of breaking out of the “mid-tier leader” mold and piercing the premium tier.
As expected, the phones with 9200 will start rolling out in China in early 2023, followed by Europe, Latin America, and India. The most interesting market will be the European premium segment, where Chinese OEMs, such as Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo, fiercely compete with Samsung. The critical question is whether and how many flagship models based on 9200 these OEMs will field there.
When I asked about the US market, MediaTek’s executives squarely prioritized consolidating and expanding their recent considerable share gain in the mid-tier over premium. Mid-tier has become a happy hunting ground for MediaTek in the US. As you may recall, IDC reported that MediaTek became the Android market share leader in the US in Q4 2021. It also reached the significant milestone of offering its first 5G phone with mmWave support, Motorola Edge 2022. Allegedly Qualcomm was less focused on this segment because of the chip supply shortage. But with smartphone demand slowing, there might be a stiff fight ahead.
MediaTek’s strategy of focusing on mid-tier now makes sense, as the only premium Android OEM in the region, Samsung, is committed to using Qualcomm SoC for the next couple of years. MediaTek’s VP Eric Fisher did talk about their ambition to enter the US premium segment, but that is still some ways away.
Another interesting announcement was T800 thin modem. MediaTek emphasized that the chipset was for the 5G IoT market. But its feature set makes it a viable choice for smartphone OEMs using thin modems, such as Apple and Google. I will keep an eye on any developments in that area.
The newly announced Chromebook chipsets give OEMs more options, further allowing MediaTek to consolidate its current dominant market position. Similarly, the latest Smart TV solution should cement its leadership in the TV and media player space.
Closing comments:
Apart from product announcements, a couple of other things stood out for me at the summit. MediaTek’s confidence in projecting its technology and market leadership was the first and most significant. The CEO, Rick Tsai, explained how they markedly changed their strategy from fast follower to technology leader in the last few years. For example, they decided to be on the leading edge of process nodes and forged a close relationship with TSMC to be among the first to get to access the latest 4nm node. They also focused on being among the first with advanced technologies such as WiFi7, hardware-based ray tracing, and others. All these marks their arrival as a strong contender on the 5G premium smartphone scene.
Another vital aspect was showcasing their diversified portfolio—smartphones represent only 55% of the overall business. The remaining comes from Compute, FWA CPE, IoT, WiFi, media, and other offerings. Additionally, in those segments, they have not only significant market share but also strong partnerships. For example, they collaborate with all major OEMs in the Chromebook market, work with Intel for 5GPCs, partner with Amazon for media players, and have strong traction with Verizon, T-Mobile, KDDI, BT, Telefonica for CPEs, etc.
In summary, MediaTek gave a compelling story to show how the strong product line-up and relationships give them a lot of confidence going into 2023. It will be interesting to see how the year unfolds, especially when all indications are that it might turn out challenging for the tech sector.
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