Amid the global chip shortage, smartphone makers are diversifying the risks by picking multiple chip makers to meet the demand, according to a new report.
The smartphone models launched in 2021 show an increasing preference of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) towards opting for multiple chipset suppliers for their smartphone portfolio.
According to market research firm Techarc, MediaTek led with 81 smartphone models launched on their chipset against Qualcomm, which saw 51 launches in India.
Realme, Samsung, and Motorola had three chipset suppliers for the smartphones launched in 2021.
“The chipset landscape is changing fast as we see OEMs now becoming a competition to the fabless chipset makers,” said Manish Rawat, senior analyst, at Techarc.
“In 2021, the trend just started to emerge with no major impact on the market but 2022 and beyond, OEMs are likely to strengthen their own chipset roadmaps reducing dependability on the SoC makers,” he added.
While this gives OEMs better control on creating differentiation right at the core of the product, the opportunity for chipset makers, especially in premium and flagship products, is likely to squeeze as these OEMs are introducing them with proprietary chipsets, the report noted.
After Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Google, and OPPO have already unveiled their chipsets.
Vivo also announced its first ISP (Image Signal Processor) last year.
Among the fabless chipset makers, this is likely to have a bigger impact on Qualcomm as its chipsets are used by leading OEMs for their premium and flagship models.
“At the same time, MediaTek would also see some impact on its Dimensity family which has started penetrating in the premium category of smartphones,” said the report.
As 5G smartphone launches are taking place at multiple tiers of the market, it will be a close competition between Qualcomm and MediaTek in 2022 to steal the maximum 5G smartphone deals.
