MediaTek Poised to Overtake Qualcomm as Top Phone AP Vendor: SA

The global smartphone applications processor (AP) market grew 17% to $8.3 billion in Q3, said Strategy Analytics Thursday. Qualcomm leads the market with 34.4% share, Apple 27.8% and MediaTek 26.8%, but MediaTek ended the first nine months of 2021 with a 26-million-unit lead over Qualcomm; it's on track to become the top smartphone AP vendor for the first time on an annual basis, SA said. Qualcomm lowered the priority of midrange and low-end 4G APs to focus on premium APs to make the best use of available foundry capacity, said the research firm. Qualcomm's premium tier AP Snapdragon 888/888+ was the top-selling Android AP during the quarter. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing made three-fourths of total smartphone APs shipped in Q3, followed by Samsung Foundry. Smartphone APs manufactured in 7 nanometer and below process technologies were 47% of total smartphone AP shipments in Q3, it said.