The smartphones from Apple, Samung and other manufacturers are all powered by an ARM processor. Well-known chip manufacturers include Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung and HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei. These companies provide the fast SoCs (Systems on Chip) that are found in the upper-class devices of smartphone manufacturers.

Less known, But the SoC manufacturers Mediatek and Unisoc are quite successful: The market researchers from Counterpoint Research put Mediatek in first place among smartphone chipset manufacturers in their last study. 31 Percent of all smartphones sold worldwide in the third quarter should run with a Mediatek chipset, which corresponds to about 100 Millions of smartphones. Qualcomm followed with 29 percent market share as well as Apple, HiSilicon and Samsung with 12 percent, the meager remaining 4 percent is occupied by Unisoc.

Distribution of 5G technology Mediatek also has fast and expensive SoCs on offer, but the analysts locate their chips mainly in devices from the price range between 100 and 250 US dollars. In addition, they suspect that Qualcomm could move back to the top in the fourth quarter 2020, which is about to expire. The US company would be at the top for 5G-capable chipsets with 31 percent market share, due to the ever increasing spread of this technology, the market share should also be overall so continue to rise. The analysts assume that a third of all smartphones sold in this quarter can work in 5G networks.

If you don’t look at the number of items, but at the sales, Mediatek is a big way behind Qualcomm: According to the According to analysts from IC Insights, Qualcomm comes to almost 20 billion US dollars this year, Mediatek reaches almost half. (ll)