Qualcomm has gained more share in the global smartphone applications processor (AP) market in the first half of 2017 as main rivals MediaTek and Spreadtrum did not perform well.
Qualcomm, the US-based semiconductor major, is poised for further share gains through 2017 with its strengthened Snapdragon 600-series of APs.
“Qualcomm gained market share with the help of a strengthened portfolio across the board from flagship to mid-range. After missing the initial 14 nm FinFET AP wave, Qualcomm made sure it is one of the first companies with a commercial 10 nm smartphone AP,” said Sravan Kundojjala, associate director at Strategy Analytics.
Qualcomm’s semi-custom 10 nm flagship 64-bit AP Snapdragon 835, which integrates a gigabit-class LTE modem, has achieved success than its earlier version Snapdragon 820 / 821.
The growth of Qualcomm in the revenue share did not support the global smartphone processor market in the first half. The smartphone applications processor market fell 5 percent to $9.4 billion in H1 2017.
The report did not share any indication about the growth of smartphone processor market in the second half of 2017.
Qualcomm, MediaTek, Apple, Samsung LSI and Spreadtrum have captured the top-five revenue share rankings in the smartphone AP market in H1 2017.
Qualcomm has captured 42 percent revenue share to maintained its smartphone AP market share leadership.
The revenue share of Apple was 18 percent in the smartphone processor market. MediaTek also has 18 percent in the global smartphone processor market.
64-bit APs registered 24 percent growth and accounted for 86 percent of total smartphone AP shipments in 1H 2017.
MediaTek
The report said recovery of MediaTek will take time as its associated modem technology is generations behind market leader Qualcomm, according to Strategy Analytics.
MediaTek’s weak portfolio and increased competition from Qualcomm contributed to its share loss in H1 2017. MediaTek could not achieve demand for its flagship Helio X series. The report said MediaTek’s mid-range Helio P series chips performed strongly.
“MediaTek is set to de-emphasis Helio X in favor of Helio P to optimize its investment and to recover market share in H2 2017,” said Stuart Robinson, executive director of the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service.
Innovations
Taiwan-based MediaTek in August introduced Helio P23 and Helio P30 chips to deliver performance and power efficiency, dual camera photography, dual SIM and dual 4G VoLTE capabilities, targeting the mid market.
Last week, Qualcomm unveiled Snapdragon 636 featuring Qualcomm Kryo 260 CPU, which delivers 40 percent increase in device performance over the Snapdragon 630. The integrated Qualcomm Adreno 509 GPU is designed to boost gaming and browsing performance by 10 percent as compared to the previous version.
Tablet processor market
Meanwhile, tablet Applications Processor (AP) market registered 5 percent growth to reach $984 million in H1 2017.
Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung LSI captured the top-five revenue share rankings in the tablet processor market. Apple gained share and increased its tablet processor revenue share to 37 percent. Intel and Qualcomm grabbed the number two and three spots with 18 percent revenue share and 16 percent share, respectively.
Baburajan K
