Taipei,Oct.9,2012(CENS)--MediaTek Inc.became the world's No.3 supplier of smartphone processors in the first half of this year mostly thanks to strong market for low-priced smartphones of mainland China,where the Taiwanese fabless company is already the No.1 supplier of the chips.
The company's revenue of NT$11 billion(US$366.9 million at US$1:NT$30)for September hit a 29-month high.
Credit Suisse estimated MediaTek's shipments at 38.5 million smartphone chips for the third quarter and 42 million chips in the fourth quarter,bringing its total shipments for this year to an estimated 110 million chips.The annual forecast is higher than the company's goal of 95 million chips.
Credit Suisse estimated strong sales of the company's duo core processors in mainland China will let MediaTek slip only 6%at most in revenue in the fourth quarter from a peak level in the third quarter.
Deutsche Bank estimated unlike the huge fourth-quarter recession plaguing the company in past years,the company will shake off the recession this quarter thanks to brisk smartphone-chip shipments.
In the first three quarters this year,MediaTek had total revenue of NT$72.5 billion(US$2.4 billion at US$1:NT$30),surging 12.9%from the same period of last year.IN the third quarter alone,the company raked in consolidated revenue of NT$29.4 billion(US$982 million),rising 25.73%from the second quarter.The increase pace is higher than the 13-18%range set by the company itself.
Market research organization Strategy Analytics pointed out that strong shipments allowed MedaTek to leap forward over Broadcom and Texas Instruments(TI)to the third place from the fifth in global market for smartphone chips in the third quarter.
The market research organization estimated global sales of smartphone processors at US$5.5 billion in the first half of this year,spiking 61%year on year.
Intel Corp.had a 0.2%share of global smartphone-chip market in the first half of this year with its 32nm Medfield processor.Marvell dropped out of the top-five list due to difficulty at primary customer,Research In Motion(RIM).Qualcomm and Samsung remained the No.1 and No.2 players,respectivel.
