Taiwan chip vendors including MediaTek will continue to play an influential role in the global high-tech sectors in 2022 with major advantages including strong IC design prowess, effective marketing strategy and sound ecosystem support, according to sources from backend houses.

The vendors have significantly narrowed their technology gaps with Qualcomm after striving hard on product upgrades during the 4G/5G transition. In particular, MediaTek is running close to the US chip supplier in in terms of design capability for 5G handset chip solutions, the sources said.

Effective marketing strategy is another advantage enabling Taiwan IC designers to score big sales in the 5G era. In this regard, MediaTek has seen its 5G mobile SoCs well adopted by Chinese handset vendors such as Oppo and Vivo, thanks to its relatively affordable quotes for chips with performance rivaling counterparts from international peers, the sources continued.

Moreover, fabless chipmakers in Taiwan can more easily gain capacity support from their domestic foundry and backend partners, which will help them better fulfill shipments to and win more orders from downstream clients, the sources said.

MediaTek is moving to roll out its 5G handset SoCs fabricated at TSMC with 6nm process technology to power their medium- and high-end models by Chinese vendors, the sources said, adding that it will further adopt the foundry's 5nm and 4nm nodes to manufacture 5G mmWave chipsets for their flagship smartphones.

MediaTek has started sending engineering samples for its 2022 offerings to OSATs including ASE Technology, King Yuan Electronics and Sigurd Microelectronics, who have also settled next year's capacity allocations for the chip vendor, the sources said.

By DIGITIMES