Counterpoint Reports: Mediatek lead chipset market in Q2 2021

 Counterpoint Research has posted its quarterly analysis of the smartphone SoC 

market, and Mediatek is the big winner between April and June 2021. The company

 sold 43% of all chipsets on the market, which is more than second-placed 

Qualcomm and third Apple combined.

The Taiwanese company has its biggest market share ever, mostly driven by a 

“competitive 5G portfolio in the low-mid segment and without major supply 

constraints”, revealed Dale Gai, Research Director at Counterpoint. It also benefited 

from less issues (at least compared to Qualcomm) with the RFIC, power 

management IC yields at TSMC.

However, when it came to modems and 5G ones in particular the San Diego

company was in the lead with 55%, while Mediatek came in second with 30%.

Qualcomm’s dominance in smartphone baseband shipments stems from the Apple 

iPhone 12 series. There’s also a huge demand for 8-series and 4-series 

Snapdragon platforms, and shipments could’ve been higher if TSMC didn’t have 

such an issue with capacity. Qualcomm managed to diversify the production of 

chips for late Q2 2021, which will inevitably improve forecast and sales.

The biggest loser in this race is, to no one’s surprise, the HiSilicon team. Huawei is

 unable to manufacture new chips, so it only sold accumulated inventory, and 

there's barely any of that remaining. That’s why we saw Huawei P50 smartphones 

with an artificially limited 4G Snapdragon 888 and even then in very limited 

supply.

Blog By Nikhil