It’s the last month of the year, and an apt time to take a broad look at the smartphone landscape in 2023 – both in India, as well as globally. Talking specifically about the chipset space, it’s pretty clear that the smartphone segment is largely divided between Qualcomm and MediaTek-powered devices. But which chipmaker made the most progress this year? Well, 91mobiles’ internal research and a recent Counterpoint Research report point towards MediaTek as making some big strides in 2023 with regard to the market share. For the fifth quarter in a row, MediaTek-powered handsets have topped the chart for global sales, which can be attributed to the cutting-edge features they deliver across all price ranges. Let us delve deeper and see how it was made possible.
Global perspective
As per Counterpoint, MediaTek topped the global chipset market share in Q2 2023, with a 30 percent chunk of the pie.
This is a trend that has continued for a while. Since as far back as Q1 2022, MediaTek-equipped smartphone shipments have been at the top around the world. In Q2 2023, these shipments saw an increase despite the heavy competition seen in the entry-level 5G smartphone market. This can mainly be attributed to sales of phones in the low-to-mid-end segments that are known for offering solid value for money thanks to their adoption of the MediaTek Dimensity 6000 and MediaTek Dimensity 7000 series chips. Moreover, there was no shortage of sales in the premium segment as well, thanks to the powerful Dimensity 8000 series chipsets, which bring innovative features to the table such as Intelligent Display Sync 2.0, AI-VRS, and more.
This essentially suggests that whether it’s the all-round brilliance of OnePlus phones targeted towards power users or the extraordinary camera performance offered by Vivo and OPPO handsets, MediaTek chipsets have been at the core of some popular devices in 2023.
India story
Not just in Q2 but even in Q1 2023, MediaTek-powered smartphones emerged as the preferred choice among consumers, as per a report by Counterpoint Research. This widespread preference by the market is likely due to the fact that MediaTek has been able to offer impressive features at compelling price points. Its cutting-edge AI offerings were also a huge highlight. All MediaTek’s SoCs are equipped with dedicated AI Processing Units that enable global smartphone manufacturers to dish out various AI features. Whether it’s night-time photography or video stabilisation, MediaTek’s APUs ensure that the end consumer gets unbridled access to leading-edge tech.
MediaTek retained the top spot in terms of chipset market share in India during Q2, 2023, extending its share from 51 percent in the previous quarter to 53% during the second quarter of this year. Even in the 5G chipset market, MediaTek performed impressively and surpassed Qualcomm with a 38 percent market share during Q2, 2023, with the latter’s share pegged at 35 percent.
While the Counterpoint Research report points out that Vivo and Xiaomi were the key contributors to MediaTek’s success, OnePlus was the key for Qualcomm with 33 percent of the chipset maker’s overall share. Vivo also played a crucial role for Qualcomm and accounted for 20 percent of the brand’s overall market share with its phones during the second quarter this year.
Notably, Samsung’s Exynos chipsets registered a growth of 21 percent year-on-year, reaching its highest-ever 12 percent market share in India during Q2, 2023.
If we talk about MediaTek’s growth, high-end offerings such as the Realme 11 Pro, OnePlus Nord 3 5G, and the OPPO Reno10 5G were among the top-selling MediaTek-equipped handsets in India, as per user searches and e-store clicks via 91mobiles. Others like the Infinix GT 10 Pro, iQOO Z7 Pro, Vivo V27, Motorola Edge 40 Neo, and the Vivo V29 Pro, also figured into this list.
As is visible from the list above, MediaTek is responsible for quite a few affordable yet highly feature-rich smartphones launched over the past year. In fact, of all the MediaTek smartphones that came out between November 2022 and November 2023, 85.6 percent were priced below the Rs 25,000 mark. The company’s strong position is also apparent if you take a look at the list of the most popular smartphones priced below Rs 25,000, as it includes as many as five MediaTek-powered handsets – Realme 11 Pro, Infinix GT 10 Pro, Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro Plus 5G, iQOO Z7 Pro, and Motorola Edge 40 Neo.
However, it is important to note that high-end chipsets from MediaTek like the Dimensity 9000 and Dimensity 8200 have ensured that the chipmaker extends its dominance in the Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000 price range as well.
Additionally, MediaTek fared really well against its main competitor, Qualcomm, last year. 53.9 percent of the overall phones launched during the period featured MediaTek-branded CPUs, compared to the 46.1 percent of phones that had Qualcomm chips powering them.
Increasing adoption in flagship segment and promising future ahead
The flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chip has proven to be a strong candidate for flagship smartphones, thanks to its performance, battery efficiency, photography chops, and AI capabilities. This SoC powers some of the latest premium flagships like the Vivo X90 Pro and OPPO Find N3 Flip.
With more and more brands choosing MediaTek solutions over others, the prospects for the recently launched MediaTek Dimensity 9300 are promising as well. It’s the first in the market with the latest Arm Cortex-X4 and Cortex-A720 processors and also the world’s first flagship smartphone chip to use all big cores. This leads to a 40 percent multi-core performance upgrade and its use of the 3rd generation 4nm process from TSMC gives a 33 percent boost to its multi-core power savings. Moreover, this chip is tailored for GenAI experiences, as its APU architecture incorporates a dedicated hardware engine for the same, enabling faster and safer edge AI computing.
One of the most striking aspects of this cutting-edge new chipset from MediaTek is that by combining the extreme 8-core CPU design with its 2nd generation hardware raytracing engine, the Dimensity 9300 provides gamers with full raytracing experiences at a smooth 60fps. This makes it the world’s first mobile platform to achieve console-level global illumination effects.
Conclusion
As it is clear from Counterpoint’s report and our own research, MediaTek has been going head-to-head with Qualcomm in the smartphone market and is pioneering the way for phone makers around the world. The company’s journey continues to see an upward trend, which is translating into dominance in the global as well as Indian smartphone market, in some segments.
