MediaTek was once associated with poorly optimized chips with inflated numbers but lower performance. However, the company has improved significantly in recent years, culminating in this year's release of the Dimensity series. It must be agreed that the Helio P series was not the most exciting line of chipsets released by MediaTek. These chips did not match Qualcomm's offerings and forced the company to remain in the mid-range segment throughout the year. In 2019, the company showed signs of improvement with the release of the Helio G series. Last year, it changed the smartphone market with the arrival of excellent, advanced 5G chips. In addition to all the features and benefits, these chips were much cheaper than Qualcomm's 5G offerings. According to a Digitimes report, MediaTek's growth in the market with the Dimensity series has earned it the title of the largest chipset vendor in 2020.
According to the report, the Taiwanese chipmaker was the number 1 chip maker in 2020. Huge brand growth thanks to growing orders from key smartphone manufacturers, Huawei's US ban and the company's strategic announcement of a new line of Dimensity chipsets with built-in 5G modems.
Xiaomi supplied more than 351,8 million chips to smartphone manufacturers in 2020
In 2020, MediaTek shipped 351,8 million units to smartphone manufacturers. The company now has a 27,2% market share, up from 17,2% in 2019, when it shipped 238 million smartphone shipments. According to Omdia, this is the first time that MediaTek has surpassed Qualcomm as the leading smartphone chipset brand in terms of shipments.
Xiaomi has been the company's biggest customer so far, shipping 63,7 million phones with MediaTek chips in 2020, up from 19,7 million in 2019. Oppo shipped the second-highest number last year with a total of 55,3 million smartphones, compared to 46,3 million in 2019. Combined with Realme, Oppo shipped 83,2 million MediaTek smartphones last year. Even Samsung increased orders from the chipmaker to 43,3 million shipments in 2020. Without the Kirin chipset division, Huawei had no choice but to find a new supplier for its smartphones. Since the US ban prevents the company from dealing with Qualcomm, the Chinese giant has ordered chips from MediaTek. Vivo is also another important player working with MediaTek, especially with the iQOO line.
This year, we expect MediaTek to continue to grow. Huawei and the new Honor will continue outsourcing chipsets due to the end of the Kirin line. In addition, other brands such as Xiaomi and Realme will maintain this strategic partnership. Ultimately, this allowed them to launch a slew of cheap phones with 5G connectivity. The latter will unveil a new phone called Realme V13 tomorrow, and it is equipped with a cost-effective 5G chip MediaTek Dimensity 700. The cost-effective chips released by the company will continue to bring them more partnerships in the future. After all, 5G needs to roll out further, and emerging markets are rushing to budget phones.
This year, MediaTek is confident that it will also play a big role in the market of cost-effective flagships. The company announced two chipsets with an advanced 6nm process and Cortex-A78 cores, named Dimensity 1200 and Dimensity 1100.
