When it comes to chips in phones and tablets, Qualcomm has been a leader in the market since the debut of the iPhone (though how it got to and maintained that position is up for debate). One of its top competitors, Taiwan-based MediaTek, has been making moves to cut down that lead, and it may be turning to a seemingly unlikely partner for some help in the GPU department: Nvidia.
According to industry publication DigiTimes (via GSMArena), Nvidia will provide the GPU for an upcoming MediaTek flagship-level mobile chipset, perhaps as soon as 2024. The two firms are also tipped to be collaborating on chips for Windows devices using architecture and designs from Arm. The hope is you’ll see beefier MediaTek Kompanio chips in higher-end devices than just sub-£500 Chromebooks. But these rumours come at an interesting time.
MediaTek launched its Dimensity 9200+ chipset last week, a half-generation bump up from November’s Dimensity 9200. The company committed to a full revamp of its premium SoC lineup in 2020, and it has since seen a decent uptick in adoption. You’ll find the 9200 in Vivo’s X90 Pro from last winter, for example. Still, Dimensity chips are poised for limited potential at this stage, serving either as an alternative or supplement to Snapdragon orders.
That’s because Samsung – Android’s largest phone brand and a major chip manufacturer itself – has been teaming up with Qualcomm in all sorts of ways, rather than MediaTek. Samsung is a partner producer for Snapdragon chips, and it equipped all Galaxy S23 devices with a special Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, eschewing the Korean firm’s own Exynos processors for the first time in years. As long as this Samsung-Qualcomm partnership remains intact – and it does look to be – MediaTek is in no position to overtake Qualcomm. Making gains on its own terms is no shabby aspiration.
Where Nvidia comes into play
Where MediaTek does stand to be more competitive against Qualcomm is in the field of energy-efficient Arm-based tablets and laptops. Qualcomm has had some penetration in this market with its Snapdragon 7c series, but you’re more likely to find a MediaTek chip in any given Chromebook.
Having Nvidia on board opens MediaTek to designing top-performance Kompanio chips that simply don’t exist. They should still be light on battery, but more powerful overall, especially in the GPU department. And with more power comes the ability to command higher prices from device manufacturers.
Some may point to the splash and subsequent fizzle that came from Samsung’s partnership with AMD to build ray tracing into the GPU for its Exynos 2200 SoC as an ill omen for MediaTek and Nvidia’s reported relationship. The reality of that situation, though, was that Exynos had always been behind on getting to feature and performance parity with comparable Snapdragon products, and it shows in the user complaints that have mounted over the years.
More importantly, Exynos chips have rarely appeared on devices from other brands, if at all.
Building on MediaTek’s cross-platform prevalence in the Chromebook market toward pricier Arm-based PCs couldn’t be more different. The company is working off of a wider base to reach a higher ceiling, and that could lead to a bigger impact on the bottom line.
Crisis and opportunity ahead
There is a slight hint of irony here as we talk about Nvidia – since it was all but set to acquire Arm from Japanese owner SoftBank in 2022. That deal fell through due to regulatory pressure. Further financial difficulties have since led SoftBank to pursue an IPO for Arm in order to generate some cash.
Part of the overall strategy to convince investors that a spin-off would be a good idea has reportedly seen some backlash among industry players. The Financial Times (via Android Police) reported in March that Arm was in the middle of changing how it licensed out its chip designs: instead of dealing with producers like MediaTek and Qualcomm, the British company would charge device manufacturers on a per-sale basis.
Such a move opens up its own can of worms – most relevant to MediaTek are that it would essentially stop paying Arm for help in creating its products, but risk losing sales thanks to those new fees that device makers didn’t have to pay before. Of course, this wouldn’t just apply to MediaTek, but to Qualcomm as well – and it has much more market share and higher average sales prices at stake.
As such, MediaTek could stand to pick up some of those losses and turn them around for its own gain.
It’ll be a while yet before we know whether a tie-up between MediaTek and Nvidia will go public. But at least we know it’ll make plenty of sense for MediaTek.
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