Analyst: MediaTek to remain market leader in smartphone chips in 2021

MediaTek will capture 37 percent of the global smartphone socs market. This means the company is doing five percent better than in 2020 and it remains the market leader. That is according to Counterpoint Research. Qualcomm remains the market leader in 5G socs for smartphones.

According to Counterpoint Research, MediaTek became the market leader in smartphone chips for the first time during the third quarter of last year, at the expense of Qualcomm. The American chip designer will be the second largest player in the global smarphonesocs market by 2021 with a market share of 31 percent. In 2020 this was 28 percent.

In the global market for 5G smartphone chips, Qualcomm remains the market leader with 30 percent this year, according to Counterpoint. MediaTek would serve 28 percent of this market by 2021. That is 13 percent more than in 2020, when it achieved a 15 percent market share.

According to Dale Gai, principal investigator of Counterpoint Research, the expected increase in MediaTek’s market share is due to the wide range of 5G SOCs that MediaTek produces for smartphones in the price range up to $150. MediaTek, according to Gai, will not be affected by global chip shortages during the production of these socs, unlike Qualcomm, which experienced delivery problems and has to deal with lower yield rates in the production of its 5nm chips. However, Gai expects the supply issues at Qualcomm to be resolved by the second half of 2021 and to expand production capacity for 5G SOCs at TSMC.

Apple is the third largest player and will reportedly serve 16 percent of the market by 2021 with its mobile socs. As for the 5G market, Apple will have a 29 percent market share by 2021. Striking: the Chinese HiSilicon hardly seems to have any market share in 2021. In 2020, HiSilicon still accounted for 10 percent of the global chip market. There seems to be a quarter of the market share left. The Chinese company served 23 percent of the 5G chip market in 2020. That market share has also fallen sharply.