Intel and MediaTek have just announced a strategic partnership. MediaTek will use Intel’s 16 nm manufacturing process to produce a variety of chips for a series of smart devices. Intel Foundry Services will provide a broad manufacturing platform with technologies tailored for high performance, low power, and always-on capabilities. Apparently, MediaTek will get Intel’s aid to conquer the segment of modems for laptops with 5G capabilities.
The reputed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo released an analysis and forecast on this. “MediaTek may obtain more modem orders for 5G notebooks with the assistance of Intel in the future”. This will “ultimately reduce the Taiwanese firm’s dependence on the smartphone business. Furthermore, Intel can convince the market IFS through a formal joint statement with MediaTek.” This is an official win-win collaboration. However, there are still some limitations in this partnership.
MediaTek wants to reduce dependence on the smartphone business
To those unaware, Intel’s foundry service was established in 2021. The goal was to meet the growing global demand for advanced semiconductor production capacity. Intel Foundry Services supports leading-edge process and packaging technologies. Worth noting that Intel customers will benefit from the recently-announced expansion of existing factories and significant investments in Ohio and Germany. MediaTek will certainly collect some positive results from the new partnership.
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A few years ago, MediaTek was behind other chipmakers in terms of relevancy. The company had a good portion of low-end and mid-range chips. However, most of the big OEMs didn’t want to use MediaTek chips. This started to change in 2019 and in 2020 with the debut of the 5G Dimensity series.
The Dimensity 5G chip family conquered the smartphone business giving MediaTek the crown of the mobile segment. For that reason, in 2022, the company’s chips are present on a large part of smartphones. However, Qualcomm is running to reconquer its position. Meanwhile, MediaTek has been trying to get a slice of the flagship market with the Dimensity 9000 series. But yet, the Snapdragon 800 series family keeps being the favorite choice for flagships. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 will be present in the big majority of 2022 flagships. Meanwhile, the Dimensity 9000 stands as a chip for “special variants”.
Will the chipmaker succeed in the segment of 5G laptop modems? Time will tell.
