Industry Expert Blogs

MediaTek (MKT) recently made the news for announcing their first leading edge SoC (Helio X30), a 32% increase in quarter over quarter sales, and an expected 30% increase for the year. Both of which deserve a closer look as we move into the second half of 2016 which should be very strong for MKT, TSMC, and the fabless semiconductor ecosystem.

First a little bit of history: MKT was originally part of pure-play foundry UMC making chips for the consumer electronics market but was spun out in 1997 and taken public on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 2001. MKT started out making chips for DVD players, TV, and early mobile phones. They expanded into smartphones and tablets and today are the number two SoC company, QCOM being number one. QCOM dominates the high end SoCs/smartphones while MKT is known for mid to low end products.

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