MediaTek is found to have taken its biggest share of the mobile SoC market ever for the second quarter of 2021

Counterpoint Research has now released its latest (August 2021) market-tracking report for the smartphone SoC (encompassing 5G baseband chipsets as well as application processors). It covers the second quarter of this year (2Q021), and indicates that MediaTek is proving earlier projections of unparalleled success in the same 12 months true thus far.

The Taiwanese company has posted a 43% share of this market, up from 37% in 1Q2021 and 28% in the same quarter of 2020. Qualcomm came in second at 28% (or 4% less year-on-year (YoY)), with Apple in third with a flat YoY share of 14%. 

The Cupertino giant was followed by a perhaps surprising entrant in 4th place: Unisoc, which grew its share by 5% YoY to 9%, thus taking the spot occupied by Samsung in 2Q2020. The South Korean's decline to 7% from (12% last year) looks better compared to that of HiSilicon, however. 

Huawei's mobile chipset-specific divison had a 16% share in 2Q2020; however, it has dwindled to 3% in this latest report. MediaTek's happier results were attributed to the presence of its SoCs in the low- to mid-range 5G smartphone market, although it is still doing business in the 4G/LTE space at present.

Nevertheless, Qualcomm led the 5G baseband sector in 2Q2021, with a 55% share compared to 29% the previous year. Counterpoint also found that this OEM was generally more exposed to the ongoing supply-chain crisis than MediaTek for the latest quarter.

However, the US company has responded by distributing more orders among a number of additional foundries (TSMC, for example). These measures might pay off for Qualcomm in subsequent quarters as they may result in that many more chipsets it can ship in the near future.

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