MediaTek
More info
- Released
- 1997
- Type
- Fabless semiconductor company
Taiwanese chip designer that made cheap mobile phones possible and now ships more phone processors than anyone else.
Spun out of UMC in Hsinchu in 1997, it started with controller chips for CD and DVD drives. The breakthrough came in the mid-2000s with turnkey phone platforms: chip, reference board and software in one box, so a small factory in Shenzhen could have a handset on sale within months. The so-called shanzhai industry ran almost entirely on MediaTek.
The reputation as the budget alternative to Qualcomm stuck for years. With the Dimensity line for 5G in 2019 MediaTek started competing at the top end too, and since around 2020 it has been the largest supplier of Android chips by volume. Like most rivals, it builds on ARM cores and leaves the manufacturing to TSMC.