We owe MediaTek a bit for its role in triggering a smartphone revolution across emerging markets like India with its affordable chipsets. Having
democratised smartphones, this Taiwanese company is now preparing to enter the big league with processors that are good enough to take on the best in the business and enter developed markets like the US in the process.
MediaTek president Ching-Jiang Hsieh reiterates that the company has global intentions with growth in all markets. “We are very successful in countries like China and emerging markets like India, but we want to replicate that success in Europe and the US too. You need to be fully prepared with all your technology if you intend to be successful,” he said in a conversation on the sidelines of the CES in Las Vegas. The company is banking on its new 4G LTE technologies and high-end televisions to grow in the developed markets. The company, which is already a leader in television processors across the globe, announced a partnership with Sony and Google to launch the first Android Lollipop televisions in the world.
Senior director Arthur Wang says the company has merged all their strengths into one with the launch of the latest smartphone and smart televisions. “We are repositioning ourselves with the Everyday Genius campaign and telling the world the kind of role we are playing in these kind of technologies,” he adds. For over a year, MediaTek has been pushing the concept of the Super Mid, where by its phones bring high end features to a mid-range price point. In fact, the most successful phones of 2014 have all been in this range. “Our idea is to be inclusive. It’s not because we are driving the price, but because we are enabling a lot of players and everyone is trying to bring down the price,” adds Wang.
New phones powered by MediaTek, like the Lenovo Vibe X2 and Meizu Mx4, have better performance benchmarks than top-end phones. That is why chief marketing officer Johan Lodenius says 2014 was the year in which they caught up with the market leaders, and “maybe even surpassed them”. “Frankly, we did a better job than them in multiprocessing… the growth has been phenomenal. You have to look at us more as a startup company in comparison to Qualcomm and Intel. But we are getting there really fast. We now have the core performance and better multi-media performance than everybody else,” he adds.
“This year we have already shipped five different LTE chipsets and the price points on some of these phones are definitely better than our competitors,” says Lodenius, underlining the fact that
MediaTek is a consumer electronics company to the core. “We are humble and here for everyone. Our target is to enrich and enhance the others,” he says, adding that the competitors have been forced to change because of the way
MediaTek has been approaching the market. We grew up in a low margin environment that is now becoming middle class. In a way our market is growing and their markets are going down. You have no choice, those margins are going to go away, whether you want it or not.”
MediaTek is clearly seeing the new Android TV as its big entry into the high-end US market, having been an mass market player for so long. Joe Chen, corporate senior vice-president and GM for home entertainment, says Android TV will start from the US market. “When a product is proven to be successful in the US market it will penetrate other markets too,” he says. The company is also working on connected home entertainment systems that integrate Google Cast and are compatible with top streaming services like Spotify.
On the other end of the spectrum, the company is also trying to tap the developer community in countries like India with its Internet of Things SDK. Mark Naddell, who looks after Mediatek Labs, says the idea is to develop versions of products that are friendly to the long term. “Internet of Things is actually a new name for things that have been there for a long time,” he says, adding that they are trying to make it more scalable with Labs. While labs has now launched in China and US, India is on top of their expansion plans. “India is already about 15% of traffic on our site,” he adds.
“Be it an emerging market or a developed one, you need to provide differentiation and value to customer,” Ching-Jiang Hsieh sums up the challenge and opportunity.
(The author was in Las Vegas at the invitation of MediaTek)
