With a mighty 43% market share MediaTek shreds Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple and all the others, but if we look only at 5G chips the numbers change
That 2021 has been a strange, and above all difficult, year for the electronics market is shown by the behavior of a lot of smartphone manufacturers, including the biggest and most powerful ones. Just think of Xiaomi, which has presented a myriad of models of the Mi 11 series, with an equally high number of chips.
But think also of Apple, which had to reduce the production of iPhone 13 in the last quarter certainly not for lack of demand (iPhone 13 sold out), but for lack of chips. And what about Samsung that, according to many analysts, in terms of chips has made more than one mistake this year? It’s not at all surprising, then, that the world’s largest manufacturer of processors for smartphones and tablets is not, at the end of 2021, the company that everyone would think.
MediaTek first chip manufacturer
According to the latest report by Counterpoint Research, despite the chip crisis, more chips have been produced this year: the growth was 6% compared to last year. Not a lot, but in this period is a significant figure.
The first manufacturer of SoC (System on Chip, the processors of smartphones and tablets) was the Taiwanese MediaTek, which literally tore the competition in the second half of 2021, touching a market share of 43%. In the same period of 2020 MediaTek did not exceed 26% market share.
Down, however, Qualcomm, Samsung and Hisilicon (i.e. Huawei): the first goes from 28% to 24%, the second from 12% to 7% and the third collapses from 16% to 3%. Apple remains stable, with 14% market share both this year and last year.
Qualcomm consoles itself with the percentage achieved if we consider only chips for 5G smartphones: 55% is in its hands, against MediaTek’s 30%. But the American company can’t rest on its laurels, since its new top of the range Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip will have to face this year the fierce MediaTek Dimensity 9000, which shows great promise.
The surprise Unisoc
In Counterpoint Research’s data, however, the real surprise is another: Unisoc. A chip manufacturer practically unknown to the public, it actually supplies a lot of SoCs for the lowest end of the market, that of ultra-cheap smartphones.
A business that did well in 2021 as well, so much so that Unisoc goes from 4% to 9% market share.