MediaTek

Corporate History

MediaTek was originally a unit of United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) tasked with designing chipsets for home entertainment products. On May 28, 1997, the unit was spun off and incorporated. MediaTek Inc. was listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSEC) under the "2454" code on July 23, 2001.

The company started out designing chipsets for optical drives and subsequently expanded into chip solutions for DVD players, digital TVs, mobile phones, smartphones and tablets. In general MediaTek has had a strong record of gaining market share and displacing competitors after entering new markets.

The company launched a division to design solutions for mobile devices in 2004. Seven years later, it was taking orders for more than 500 million mobile system-on-chip units per annum, which included solutions for both feature phones and smart devices. By providing extensive system engineering assistance the company allowed many smaller companies and new entrants to enter a mobile phone market that had previously been dominated by large, often vertically integrated corporations that had long been broadly entrenched in the telecommunications industry. The mobile chip market quickly became the main growth driver for the company.

At Mobile World Congress 2014, MediaTek unveiled its new brand “Everyday Genius”, dubbing the term “Super-mid market”, with the vision and aiming to make smartphones more accessible affordable to the wider market.

As of November 2014, over 1500 mobile models accounting for 700 million units were shipped globally in 2014, using MediaTek chips, and the company posted revenues of US$5.3 billion in the first half of 2014, nearly as much as the whole of 2013. The revenue growth was however partly due to revenue recognition from the acquisition of MStar which became effective at the beginning of 2014.

InProComm

In 2005, MediaTek acquired Inprocomm, a wireless semiconductor design firm producing 802.11a, b and a/g chips.

Analog Devices cellular chip operations

In 2007, MediaTek acquired the cellular chip operations of Analog Devices for US$350 million.

Ralink

On May 5, 2011, MediaTek acquired Ralink Technology Corporation, gaining products and expertise for Wi-Fi technology for mobile and non-mobile applications, as well as for wired DSL and Ethernet connectivity.

Coresonic

On April 11, 2012, MediaTek acquired Coresonic, a global producer of digital signal processing solutions based in Linköping, Sweden. Coresonic is now a wholly owned subsidiary of MediaTek in Europe.

MStar

On June 22, 2012, MediaTek announced that it would acquire rival Taiwanese chipset designer MStar Semiconductor Inc., which held a strong market share position in digital television chips. The initial phase of the deal will see MediaTek taking a 48 percent stake, with an option to purchase the remaining stake at a later date.

The merger between MediaTek and MStar was delayed by antitrust concerns of China and South Korea and finally finalized on February 1, 2014.

Financial performance

MediaTek's financial results have been subject to variation as the financial success of different product lines fluctuated. MediaTek's relatively strong sales in 2009/2010 was based on its strong market position for feature phone chipsets. Smartphone and tablet solutions contributed to MediaTek's sales and income increase in 2013, while revenue recognition from the acquisition of MStar Semiconductor, which became effective in February 2014, as well as a continuing strong position for smartphone and tablet solutions, are the main reasons for the sales growth seen in 2014.

MediaTek's stock has been trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under the symbol TWSE: 2454. In its early days, the stock peaked at NT$783 (the all-time high) in April 2002, and later saw a peak of NT$656 in March 2007. The lowest price in the period starting from 2001 was reached in January 2005, with a stock price of NT$171. In more recent times, the stock peaked at NT$590 in January 2010, and saw a low point in August 2011 at NT$221. The stock price saw its highest level since 2010 at NT$545 on July 3, 2014. The stock price then declined to a low near NT$400 in October 2014 before recovering to a price of NT$488 as of January 8, 2015, representing a market capitalization of approximately NT$770 billion (US$25 billion), based on 1,571 million shares outstanding.

Heterogeneous multi-processing

With the announcement and sampling of its MT8135 system-on-chip (SoC) for tablets in July, 2013, MediaTek became the world’s first company to demonstrate ARM big.LITTLE chipsets with heterogeneous multi-processing capabilities. By concurrently allocating tasks to individual CPU cores, the MT8135 could in theory offer significant power saving advantages over competing mobile device solutions. A variant of the MT8135 was used by Amazon in new Kindle Fire HD tablet models in the second half of 2014.

MediaTek announced the high-end MT6595 platform for smartphones in February 2014. The MT6595 is an octa-core SoC in a big.LITTLE configuration with LTE network connectivity powered by four Cortex-A17 cores and four Cortex-A7 cores with heterogeneous multi-processing capabilities. This chip became commercially available in devices in the second half of 2014. In July 2014, MediaTek announced a new product targeting the high-end, with a feature set largely similar to the MT6595, but instead of a heterogeneous multi-processing architecture, the MT6795 features eight symmetrical 64-bit Cortex-A53 cores in a true octa-core configuration.

"True Octa-core" trademark

In July 2013, MediaTek became the first system-on-chip (SoC) supplier to announce the development of an octa-core mobile device SoC capable of processing tasks with eight CPU cores concurrently, a solution the company refers to as "True Octa-Core". On November 20, 2013, in a press event held in Beijing MediaTek officially announced the MT6592 SoC. It's a 'true octa core' chip with eight ARM Cortex-A7 application processor clocked up to 1.7–2.0 GHz and Mali-450 MP4 GPU clocked at 700 MHz. There is no on-board LTE modem but it includes NFC radio. It also supports UltraHD or 4K video playback.

MediaTek has subsequently introduced additional products using a "true octa-core" CPU configuration using Cortex-A53 cores, with support for ARM's 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture, including the MT6752 clocked at 1.7 GHz and the high-end MT6795 clocked up to 2.2 GHz. Devices using the MT6795 were expected to be commercially available by the end of 2014.

Multimode inductive and resonance wireless charging

On January 7, 2014, MediaTek announced its development of multimode receiver technology that is compatible with inductive and resonant charging – two of the common wireless charging technologies – the first in the wireless charger industry in enabling multimode charging.

On February 24, 2014, MediaTek announced its MT3188, its first multimode wireless charging product, certified by the Power Matters Alliance and Wireless Power Consortium.

Five-in-one combo wireless connectivity SoC

On February 25, 2014, MediaTek announced the industry first five-in-one combo wireless SoC MT6630 that supports a range of connectivity standards such as 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, advanced Wi-Fi Direct and Miracast support, Bluetooth 4.1, ANT+, tri-band GPS and FM transceiver.

UltraHD TV platform for Android TV

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2015, MediaTek announced its collaboration with Google on the world’s first Ultra HD TV platform solution for Android TV, the MT5595, a new digital television SoC. It has been adopted by Sony for new LCD TV models.

System in package for wrist-worn wearables

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2016, MediaTek announced its new System in package tailored for wristware, including Bluetooth low energy, GPS and support for 320×320 MIPI displays. In comparison to similar designs, the PCB area is 41 percent smaller.

Product categories

MediaTek delivers solutions across the mobile communications, home entertainment and connectivity fields. Applications for MediaTek chips include smartphones and feature phones, tablets, digital televisions such as LCD TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, optical drives used in PCs, Wi-Fi routers and other devices featuring wireless connectivity (GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC), ADSL equipment, and smart home appliances. Its chipsets are divided into the following product categories:

Markets

MediaTek's revenue product mix in 2014, consisted of approximately 50–55% smartphone chip solutions, 25–30% digital home solutions (which includes DTV chips), 5–10% tablet chip solutions, 5–10% feature phone chip solutions and 5–10% Wi-Fi solutions.

According to information provided in MediaTek's Q1 2014 financial results conference call, in terms of product mix, MediaTek's smartphone chipset shipments consisted of 5-10% single-core, 45-55% dual-core, 30-35% quad-core and 5-10% octa-core. Most octa-cores were sold in China, while the export market (chips sold directly to manufacturers in countries such as India) was dominated by dual-core. In terms of baseband technology (smartphones only), WCDMA was 50-55%, TD 25-30% and EDGE 10-15%. According to MediaTek's Q3 2014 conference call, dual-core shipments for entry-level devices continued to be important in the second half of 2014 with an increase in export shipments as MediaTek's competitiveness China was affected by the transition to 4G.

MediaTek started shipping SoC solutions with integrated 4G LTE baseband in volume in the second half of 2014, which was later than Qualcomm, which had been shipping SoCs with integrated 4G for some time, which was likely to impact MediaTek as Chinese telecom providers such as China Mobile and carriers in other countries push and subsidize LTE technology. Although MediaTek's MT6290 stand-alone 4G baseband combined with its MT6582 or MT6592 SoCs is less profitable for MediaTek than a single-chip 4G solution would be, as of mid-2014 they have been adopted in some models by large manufacturers. However, the first generation of new affordable 4G smartphone models from large MediaTek clients such as Alcatel One Touch and ZTE use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 and 410 platforms with integrated 4G baseband. MediaTek has indicated that chips with 4G were expected to make up 20% of shipments in Q4 2014, with a significant increase expected for 2015, which will also see improvements to its product mix as new 4G chips allow it to target higher market segments.

2009–12

List of devices using Mediatek SoCs#ARMv5

2013 and later (ARMv7)

Dual-core

List of devices using Mediatek SoCs#ARMv7 Dual Core

Quad-core

List of devices using Mediatek SoCs#ARMv7 Quad Core

Hexa-core, octa-core and deca-core

List of devices using Mediatek SoCs#ARMv7 Hexa Core

ARMv8

Quad-core

List of devices using Mediatek SoCs#ARMv8 Quad Core

Octa- and deca-core

List of devices using Mediatek SoCs#ARMv8 Octa Core

Standalone application and tablet processors

List of devices using Mediatek tablet processors

Wearable device SoCs

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2015, MediaTek announced the MT2601 for wearable devices based on Google’s Android Wear software. According to MediaTek, with its small size it allows fewer components and lower current consumption when compared with other chipsets in the market. The chip includes a dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU, an ARM Mali-400 MP GPU, and allows display resolutions up to qHD (960x540). It can be combined with the MT6630 chip for wireless connectivity.

Wireless connectivity SoC

MT6630 (2014) is a five-in-one combo wireless SoC integrating dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, advanced Wi-Fi Direct and Miracast support, Bluetooth 4.1, ANT+, tri-band GPS and FM transceiver. It is intended to be paired with chips like the MT6595 octa-core smartphone processor which features an integrated 4G modem but no built-in Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/GPS/FM functionality. It could also be used in tablets in conjunction with a stand-alone application processor.

GNSS modules

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) modules.

IEEE 802.11

As a result of the merger with Ralink, MediaTek has added wireless network interface controllers for IEEE 802.11-standards, and SoCs with MIPS CPUs to its product portfolio.

Digital television SoCs

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2015, MediaTek announced the MT5595, a new digital television SoC with support for Google's Android TV platform. It has been adopted by Sony for new LCD TV models.