Xiaomi Becomes The Largest Chip Buyer From MediaTek

MediaTek, the Taiwanese SoC manufacturer places itself at the top of the list of supplier of smartphone chips for the first time in history, the company hit the milestone in 2020. Thanks to the strong increase in demand from Xiaomi and Samsung, MediaTek overtook its competitor Qualcomm.

As the industry service DigiTimes reports, citing information from the market research company Omdia, MediTek delivered platforms for a total of 351.8 million smartphones last year. This increased the number of chips that the Taiwanese manufacturer sold by 47.8 percent within just one year and gave MediaTek a strong plus in terms of market share.

Orders From Samsung And Xiaomi Changed The Game

Because the number of chips sold increased by a full 113.8 million, MediaTek’s market share grew from 17.2 percent in 2019 to a full 27.2 percent in 2020. This happened the first time in history that MediaTek has made it to the top the market for smartphone CPUs was able to work up, leaving the big US competitor Qualcomm behind in terms of chip sales.

Xiaomi became the biggest buyer of MediaTek chips in 2020 and sold a full 63.7 million with the manufacturer’s platforms – an increase of more than 223 percent after Xiaomi only sold around 19.7 million devices with MediaTek chips in 2019. Samsung also ordered significantly more chips from MediaTek and sold 43.3 million devices with CPUs from the Taiwanese supplier in 2020.

Oppo was meanwhile the second largest customer of MediaTek and sold 55.3 million smartphones with the chips from Taiwan. The Oppo subsidiary brand sold a further 27.9 million units based on MediaTek, which means that taken together with Realme, Oppo continued to be the largest buyer of MediaTek SoCs.

The lion’s share of MediaTek’s sales are still in entry-level and mid-range smartphones, as Omdia says is the best place to compete with Qualcomm. For the current year, the market observers expect that MediaTek can continue the upward trend, because on the one hand more and more manufacturers are relying on its chips and on the other hand the demand for cheap smartphones will remain unchanged.