Imagination Chinese growth 2012

There was yet another interesting article in Digitimes today:

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111019PD214.html

'Major Taiwan-based IC design houses including MediaTek, MStar Semiconductor, Novatek Microelectronics, ILI Technology (Ilitek), Orise Technology and Sitronix Technology will look to smartphones for growth in 2012, industry sources have claimed. In particular, the players are expected to profit from China's booming smartphone market, th sources said.

China's local brands including Huawei Device, Lenovo and ZTE, and international brands such as Samsung Electronics are all gearing up for a surge in smartphone sales in the country, the sources indicated. The players will likely see their shipments to the China market more than double in 2012, meaning that a large increase in orders could be released to their component suppliers.

Huawei's overall handset shipments for 2011 are estimated at 19 million units, and the number will expand further to 40 million in 2012, the sources revealed. Smartphones are seen as a major growth driver, the sources said.

Huawei reportedly plans to adopt smartphone solutions from MediaTek starting 2012. The vendor currently purchases most of its handset solutions from Qualcomm.

Lenovo has set a goal of shipping 25-30 million handsets in 2012, more than doubling from the 12 million units estimated to ship in 2011, the sources noted. Its popular A60-series smartphones use 3G solutions from MediaTek.

Meanwhile, Samsung and ZTE are both expected to see their smartphone sales in China grow substantially in 2012, the sources indicated. Samsung reportedly sources panel-use driver ICs from Taiwan companies, whereas ZTE plans to launch low-priced smartphones with chipset solutions also coming from MediaTek.'

END

The 2012 estimates for Lenovo and Huawei come to 65-70 million units, whilst ZTE is larger than both of them (no.1 in China). Clearly not all these are going to contain Mediatek chips but it is clear they will account for a substantial proportion in 2012 for the above 3 players.

Add in to that Samsung, which uses Hummingbirds SoCs for many of its Chinese smartphones/tablets, Renesas with Emma Mobile EV2 shipping in volume there (and newer android SoCs coming) and also TI OMAP 3 is shipping in decent volumes in China. Then there is Apple with its well documented aggressive Chinese expansion,(and smaller players like GeneralPlus). Intel also has good infrastructure in China and will release Medfield-based products no doubt.

Looks like 2012 is gonna be huge for IMG in China. Volume is anyone's guess !