The well-known technology market researching company, Counterpoint Research has published its Component Tracker Q3 2016 survey details. As per the survey, it’s concluded that the global smartphone SoC market has grown 19% annually in Q3 2017 crossing $8 billion in chipset revenues. In which, Qualcomm retained the top position by attaining 42% of the total SoC revenues and 32% of market share in terms of shipment in Q3 2017.
On the other hand, chipset designers such as Apple and MediaTek took hold of the second and third position respectively. The Cupertino giant registered an increased shipments of 4% annually coupled by a 15% growth sequentially in Q3 2017. However, the third position holder MediaTek had a tough-competition such that its smartphone SoC revenues declined 10% annually, but increased 4% sequentially.
The Counterpoint crowns Samsung as the fastest growing smartphone SoC player in Q3 2017 in terms of shipment. The SoC shipments achieved a growth of 59% for the South Korean vendor. It also remained the fastest growing SoC player in Q3 2017 in terms of revenue, with an annual growth of 69%. Samsung’s in-house Exynos chipsets are now a great challenges for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Mobile Platforms.
The another chipset manufacturer, that the research company mentioned is Huawei. According to Counerpoint, Huawei was the second fastest growing SoC player following Samsung, in Q3 2017. The acheivement mainly attributed to its shipment of advanced HiSilicon smartphone SoCs which’d increased 42% annually. The incorporation of dedicated NPU in its Kirin 970 SoC had a possitive impact on the brand value.
Visualising and analysing the current evolvement in the smartphone SoC business, the Counterpoint Research Director Mr. Neil Shah said, “The focus in the smartphone SoC market has shifted away from the number of processor cores to the integration of newer technologies driving newer experiences. For example: focusing on immersion to unlock new experiences such as AR/VR/Depth Sensing leveraging integrated ISP (Image Signal Processors) and GPUs, to other areas such as Artificial Intelligence engines, dedicated security architecture at chipset level, enhanced connectivity paving the path to 5G and higher performance at lower power consumption levels.”
Literally, by the above words it’s clear that the chipset designers are now concentrating more on innovations rather than just increasing the cores. In deed, a healthy shift leading to an even brighter future for ever evolving semi-conducter industry.
Furthermore, it’s predicted that chipsets possessing native AI capabilities will be seeing a tremendous increase in near future. Counterpoint estimates, atleast one in three smartphones shipped in 2020 will have an SoC with native AI capabilities.”