At one time, the global mobile phone chip market was a competition market between Qualcomm and MediaTek. However, this year, everything has changed dramatically. Qualcomm continues to consolidate its advantages. MediaTek and Apple's decline, especially MediaTek, has fallen sharply, and Samsung and Huawei have risen as Hass. May bring great changes to the mobile phone chip market.
According to the third-quarter data released by the market regulator Counterpoint, Qualcomm has the most obvious advantage in the mobile phone chip market, with a market share of 42%, which is an increase of 1 percentage point from 41% in the same period of last year. It is the world’s largest mobile phone chip maker. The position has obviously been further consolidated.
Apple's A-Series processors are mainly used by their own homes, but with the iPhone in the third quarter of this year, it achieved more than 46 million iPhone shipments and the reasons for the higher prices, so it took 20% of the market share, but perhaps With iPhone X delayed until November and iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 plus were sold poorly, the share of revenue decreased by 1 percentage point compared with last year. Prior to this, there have been several agencies giving analysis that iPhone 7 sales in the third quarter significantly exceeded that of iPhone 8.
What merits attention is Samsung and Huawei Hass, both of which have significantly increased their share in the mobile phone chip market. Samsung introduced the first Exynos8890 SOC chip with integrated baseband since the end of 2015. At the beginning of this year, it even introduced Exynos8895 with a slightly higher level of technology than Qualcomm, and launched the mid-range chip Exynos7870, etc., and promoted its revenue by using more autonomous chips on its own mobile phones. The share has increased significantly, from 8% in the same period last year to 11% this year, with an increase of 37.5%. Huawei Hass increased its revenue share to 8% due to the increase in sales of Huawei mobile phones.
The worst performing MediaTek unit, MediaTek’s revenue share in the mobile phone chip market was 14%, a decrease of 22.2% from 18% in the same period last year. It was the highest among the top five mobile phone chip companies, but it was in terms of independent mobile phone chip companies. It is still the second largest mobile phone chip company in the world, and it is looking forward to consolidating its share in the mid-end mobile phone chip market next year, and even hopes to improve it. However, at present, Qualcomm is not willing to give MediaTek opportunities in mid-range and The Xiaolong 640 and Xiaolong 460, which have better performance on the low-end chip, have tried to squeeze MediaTek.
Of course, in the fierce battle between Qualcomm and MediaTek, Samsung should not ignore this competitor. Samsung is technically comparable to Qualcomm's. Its mid-range handset chips are expected to be sold to Chinese mobile phone companies Lenovo, Meizu, etc. Erosion of the market share of these two mobile phone chip companies is unfavorable news for them. Samsung is a special enterprise. It competes with mobile phone companies at the same time. At the same time, it manufactures chips for Qualcomm. It is also becoming a competitor while adopting Qualcomm chips.
Huawei’s share in the mobile phone chip market mainly depends on its Huawei mobile phone. Huawei’s share in Huawei’s handsets has been boosted by the development of Huawei’s mobile phones. However, Huawei's mobile phone sales in the third and fourth quarters of this year have significantly decreased compared to the previous years. This is becoming Huawei’s. As Hass continues to move forward, will Huawei HiSilicon also sell its mobile phone chips to other mobile phone companies to promote its own growth? Is a question worthy of attention.
Counterpoint also presented the revenue share of Spreadtrum, another independent mobile phone chip company in China, which ranked sixth, which was unchanged from the same period of last year. Perhaps it was Spreadtrum’s mid-range chip that it launched while consolidating the low-end mobile phone chip market. Some market share has helped it consolidate its position as the world’s third-largest independent mobile phone chip company. Its challenge is MediaTek and hopes to grab a share of market share from MediaTek in the mid-end chip market.
The mobile phone chip market is showing that mobile phone companies' own mobile phone chip business has shown rapid development. Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi in the top six global mobile phone companies all have their own mobile phone chip business, which is giving independent chip companies Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Spreadtrum have brought challenges, and the competition for independent mobile phone chip companies may become fiercer.