MediaTek, a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company said since the launch of MediaTek Dimensity 5G series of chipsets in 2020, MediaTek has grown to become a prominent player in the 5G chipset market globally. In an interaction with The PageOneAsia, Anku Jain , MD, MediaTek India also talks about how MediaTek's AIoT platform which is enabling radical technology transformation across original equipment makers, enterprises and startups. Edited excerpts:

What are the trends globally and in Asia in 5G smartphone adoption/launches?

Globally 5G smartphone adoption has grown significantly over the past couple of years. It is estimated that 5G smartphone subscriptions worldwide will blow past one billion this year, almost doubling from 2021. India, with over one billion active mobile subscribers, is a potential market for 5G smartphones. As Indian operators prepare for the launch of 5G services following the recent auction of 5G airwaves, we expect the demand for 5G smartphones to skyrocket in the coming days. As per the projections from Ericsson, 5G is projected to account for almost 40 percent of mobile subscriptions in India – 500 million – by the end of 2027. 

The current market scenario marks a windfall opportunity for operators, equipment vendors and technology/platform providers. MediaTek expects a major transformation in the way smartphones are used across different consumer segments. While 4G enabled the high-speed internet triggering digital adoption across all categories of users, 5G is set to further accelerate the momentum, enabling HD video streaming, AR/VR, gaming, and smarter applications like smart home, smart healthcare and more. As a chipset provider, MediaTek hopes this scenario will create the demand for high-end processors which are extremely energy efficient and customizable while also being affordable to the mass market.

What is the percentage of your existing 5G-capable smartphones vis-a-vis entire range?

Since the launch of MediaTek Dimensity 5G series of chipsets in 2020, MediaTek has grown to become a prominent player in the 5G chipset market globally. In a span of two years, the MediaTek Dimensity series has undergone major upgrades, with the flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9000 series being the latest. The MediaTek Dimensity 9000 series gains prominence as the first smartphone chipset in the industry to use 4-nm processor technology. The high-performance Dimensity 5G chipsets featuring world-class technologies such as Imagiq, HyperEngine, APU and MiraVision are powering a large number of smartphones from leading OEMs including Oppo, Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, Motorola and others.

While MediaTek’s 5G portfolio has been growing faster compared to other technologies, we still maintain prominence across 4G smartphone segment. MediaTek’s continued leadership in the Android smartphone SoC market is primarily attributed to the sale of 4G and 5G SoCs. Meanwhile, MediaTek’s 5G smartphone penetration has grown to nearly 50% (680 million units), and we expect the growth to double in non-China 5G market covering the U.S., Europe, India, SEA and others in the coming years. 

What are your flagship 5G SoC range? Who are the OEMs for Dimensity 8100 SoC globally?

MediaTek Dimensity 9000 and Dimensity 9000+ are the flagship offerings from MediaTek. They mark a significant milestone in MediaTek’s legacy of flagship SoCs with the world’s most advanced TSMC N4 (4nm-class) technology. With their superior performance and exceptional power efficiency, the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 series delivers the best of 5G, be it in gaming, streaming, collaboration, videography or multimedia.  

Further, MediaTek Dimensity 8100 is one of the latest premium offerings from MediaTek. Featuring the highly advanced TSMC N5 (5nm-class) production process, MediaTek Dimensity 8100 is known for its higher frame rate, which makes it exceptionally good at gaming. Leading OEMs like Xiaomi, realme, OnePlus, Vivo, Poco and OPPO have been among the first to feature MediaTek Dimensity 8100 in their devices.

What are the MediaTek Helio G95 capabilities? How is the industry receiving it?

MediaTek Helio G95 is a powerful game-oriented 4G chipset delivering 8% better GPU performance than the predecessor MediaTek Helio G90T. At the heart of MediaTek Helio G95 is the MediaTek HyperEngine gaming technology, combined with high-end octa-core CPU with two powerful Arm Cortex-A76 processor cores clocked up to 2.05GHz and six Cortex-A55 efficiency-focused processors. With its intelligent speed uplift feature, rapid sense feature, resource management and end-to-end optimization for smooth moves, the chipset delivers highly responsive user experience in 4G smartphones.     

MediaTek Helio G95 also packs a mix of technologies designed to surpass user expectations in streaming, videography, photography, or professional applications. With up to 10GB of LPDDR4X at 2133MHz, the chipset provides generous bandwidth while the support for UFS 2.1 storage yields ultra-fast data-streaming. 

Since its launch in Q3 2020, MediaTek Helio G95 has been received extremely well across all major markets. Some of the popular devices featuring MediaTek Helio G95 include Realme Narzo 30, Realme 8, Realme Narzo 20 Pro, Realme 7, Infinix Note 10 Pro, Redmi Note 10S, Motorola G60s, Tecno Phantom X, Tecno Camon 17 Pro, Ulefone Power 13 and Vivo Y73. Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 SE is the latest to feature MediaTek Helio G95, with its launch announced in India on August 31.

Recently MediaTek has added the latest MediaTek Helio G99 in the series that brings 4G gaming smartphones into the next generation built on the highly efficient TSMC 6nm chip production process, enables great gaming all day, big cameras, fast displays, smooth streaming, and reliable global connectivity.

Share an update on your IoT segment, and name your partners. How is this vertical growing? 

Internet of Things (IoT) has evolved into AIoT, making human-machine and machine-machine interactions more meaningful and effective. With over two decades of experience in chipset technologies and enabling nearly 2 billion consumer electronic devices every year, MediaTek has been a leader and forerunner in AIoT innovations as well. MediaTek's AIoT platform is enabling radical technology transformation across OEMs, enterprises and startups. MediaTek's AIoT program enables adopting customers to deep-differentiate in software and helps them go to market quickly.

As a natural progression to these advancements, MediaTek has come up with the new MediaTek Genio platform for AIoT devices and introduced the first chip in the MediaTek Genio family, the MediaTek Genio 1200, designed for premium AIoT products. MediaTek Genio is a complete platform stack for the AIoT which makes it easy for brands to develop innovative consumer, enterprise and industrial smart applications at the premium, mid-range and entry levels, and bring these devices to market faster. Commercial launch of AIoT products powered by the MediaTek Genio 1200 chip are expected in second half of 2022.

Globally MediaTek has been associated with industry leaders like Intel and AMD, to name a few, to enable powerful, smart devices across a wide range of consumer and enterprise applications. In a recent engagement, MediaTek collaborated with Arm and Advantech to bring high-end AIoT solutions powered by Genio. In India, MediaTek announced AIoT collaboration with VVDN Technologies as early as 2020. Flipkart MarQ Smart Speaker is one of the products developed from this collaboration. Markedly, this collaboration also signifies how MediaTek is supporting Make in India initiative.

How is chipset shortage impacting new smartphone launches? By when do you expect the situation to normalise?

Chipset shortage that hit the industry during the pandemic was attributed primarily to the sudden spike in demand from consumer electronics and automotive sector. The digitization that swept the entire world during the period was a windfall opportunity; but at the same time, the unanticipated demand also put tremendous pressure on manufacturing. This, combined with the supply chain constraints necessitated by the pandemic, aggravated the scenario during those days. 

It is to be noted that MediaTek is a fabless company, so we don’t engage in any of the chip production process. Most of that is outsourced to big companies like TSMC. Despite this, MediaTek managed to meet the demand for the chipsets during 2020-21. This has been possible with the relentless association with our suppliers, the fabs and the back-end packaging and test vendors, which helped us get estimates on the capacity and secure them to meet our customers’ demands. We were also engaging with the customer community constantly to manage the demand and supply in the best way possible.