Mediatek ramping up

Taiwanese chip powerhouse and committed IMG partner Mediatek are starting to ramp up volume of the 3.75G chip MT6573, according to Digitimes:

"China's brand-name handset vendors, including Lenovo, ZTE and TCL, have ordered more MT6573 3.75G smartphone chips from MediaTek, according to industry sources. To meet the continued rising demand, the fabless IC firm has asked for additional foundry capacity equivalent to 6,000-8,000 12-inch wafers from United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), the sources indicated."

MediaTek is expected to see monthly shipments of its MT6573 chipset solutions to reach 1-1.5 million units in October and November, and continue expanding to 3.5-4 million in December, the sources estimated. The growing shipments will boost the company's sales in the fourth quarter of 2011, the sources said.

In addition, acknowledging the MT6573's popularity, Huawei Technologies reportedly is asking MediaTek to accelerate development of the chip's successor, the sources said. Dubbed the MT6575, the next-generation single-chip solution could start shipping as early as the first quarter of 2012, the sources indicated."END
 
In addition to this Daiwa Securities are reporting that Motorola Mobility is selecting the MT6573 for its Chinese W-CDMA handsets, where it already does good volume.
Huawei's usual partner is global no.1 mobile chip vendor Qualcomm, so a switch would be very significant.The MT6575 in 2012 could conceivably use the SGX 5-XT (license announced in May) given that it is a 'next generation' chip ?


There is also MT6513 , the 2.75G version of MT6573, already shipping in volume.An IMG'd tablet chip is also very likely for 2012.
Putting all this together in my opinion is likely to result in IMG's royalty volume from Mediatek exceeding 50m for 2012.Pretty soon they may well be rivalling TI/OMAP for IMG chip volume, 2nd only to the mighty Apple.
Wonder how long it will take 'analysts' to figure this out?


A while ago , ARM's Mali PR team appeared to have developed a strategy of trying to steal IMG's (hard-earned)thunder by announcing a CPU+Mali deal with semis that had recently announced a PVR tie-up, Mediatek being a case in point. The anti-IMG brigade made much of this, but we suspected it was little more than a PR stunt - now we can see the reality of the situation.....