MediaTek beat out Apple and Qualcomm to finish 2023 as the top smartphone chip vendor

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: MediaTek finished 2023 as the world's leading smartphone processor vendor in terms of shipping volume, beating out industry heavyweights like Apple and Qualcomm for the top spot. According to the latest data from market analyst firm Canalys, a total of 117 million smartphones were shipped in Q4 that were powered by a MediaTek processor. That's an increase of 21 percent year over year, but still not the biggest yearly gain on the list.

Apple finished second with 78 million smartphone shipments, up eight percent compared to the same period a year earlier. Qualcomm placed third with 69 million chip shipments, an increase of just one percent versus Q4 2022.

Unisoc, a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based out of Shanghai, earned fourth place honors with 27 million shipments – an increase of 24 percent year over year. Samsung came in fifth place with 13 million units shipped, a huge dip of 48 percent compared to the year-ago period. HiSilicon, another Chinese fabless specialist, was sixth with seven million units shipped - a colossal 5,121 percent increase. Google rounded out the list in last place with three million SoCs shipped in Q4.

It's a bit of a different story when looking at shipment revenue. In this category, Apple led with $87 billion – up 20 percent year over year. Qualcomm came in second with $30 billion, which was down two percent compared to a year earlier. MediaTek finished in third with $23 billion in revenue, an increase of 22 percent versus the same period a year ago.

Revenue falls off a bit after that, with HiSilicon capturing fourth place with $7 billion (but up 24,471 percent year over year). Samsung took the hardest hit in terms of revenue, with a 44 percent drop down to just $5 billion in the quarter.

Samsung's woes aren't all that surprising when you consider its Exynos chipset. With the new Galaxy S24 and S24+, for example, most versions ship with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (Exynos is only used in certain markets), and the high-end S24 Ultra gets the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in all markets.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/102158-mediatek-beat-out-apple-qualcomm-finish-2023-top.html

 

[Disiw]

Not surprising, they make mostly low to mid-end stuff which is cheaper and easier to make.

Apple uses top quality nodes before anyone else, putting out class leading performance.

Which truly high-end chips do MediaTek put out?

 

[Axeia]

Not surprising, they make mostly low to mid-end stuff which is cheaper and easier to make.

Apple uses top quality nodes before anyone else, putting out class leading performance.

Which truly high-end chips do MediaTek put out?

The latest flagship would be the Dimensity 9300 which going by this video:

Rivals Apple's A17 Pro and Quallcomms Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in performance. Phone chips are weird to compare though as battery life is massively important and you're stuck with the cooling solution the particular phone maker implements. As you mention Apple is the only one consistently on the latest production nodes (it's nice when you got billions and can guarantee upfront you'll be buying many as a single company) so they most likely should win on efficiency, just not on performance in every single way.

Mediatek has come a long way compared to a couple of years ago when they were simply the budget option with mediocre GPU performance and bad GPS. They're up there with the best of them now and got something for every market segment.

 

[Disiw]

The latest flagship would be the Dimensity 9300 which going by this video:

Rivals Apple's A17 Pro and Quallcomms Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in performance. Phone chips are weird to compare though as battery life is massively important and you're stuck with the cooling solution the particular phone maker implements. As you mention Apple is the only one consistently on the latest production nodes (it's nice when you got billions and can guarantee upfront you'll be buying many as a single company) so they most likely should win on efficiency, just not on performance in every single way.

Mediatek has come a long way compared to a couple of years ago when they were simply the budget option with mediocre GPU performance and bad GPS. They're up there with the best of them now and got something for every market segment.

Rivals how? In synthetic benchmarks or real world? Because real world performance is the big problem on Android. SoCs with "on paper" Apple beating specs still loose because of fragmented OS and apps that needs to work on 1000s of different configs hence bad optimization.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs Dimensity 9300 benchmarked: There can only be one winner

We've got real-world Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 phones, so which chipset is better when put to the test?

www.androidauthority.com

It seems that A17 Pro easily wins in both single and multithread while using less power.

 

[nismo91]

Mediatek still produces many 4G only chips that are used in cheap phones around the world. you know, in countries where people couldn't afford 500$ for a new phone let alone $1500.

Both snapdragon and exynos don't produce that many 4G chips anymore. that also explains why Mediatek have so much units delivered but fewer revenues than Snapdragon and Apple. it's simply because they sold so many sub $150 phones that don't use 5G chips.

 

[Disiw]

Mediatek still produces many 4G only chips that are used in cheap phones around the world. you know, in countries where people couldn't afford 500$ for a new phone let alone $1500.

Both snapdragon and exynos don't produce that many 4G chips anymore. that also explains why Mediatek have so much units delivered but fewer revenues than Snapdragon and Apple. it's simply because they sold so many sub $150 phones that don't use 5G chips.

100% Correct

Like I said, Mediatek is mostly low to mid-end stuff.