The Mobile World Live team caught up with Johan Lodenius, CMO of fast-growing silicon player MediaTek, ahead of Mobile World Congress, to find out about the company’s plans to target the “super-mid market”.

MediaTek has a strong reputation for powering low-cost devices: how are handset vendors responding to your move into premium products? Are new potential customers welcoming MediaTek, and why?

Our history in Asia has helped guide us on our journey, where sudden growth in demand for feature phones after 2000 meant we had to work closely with partners at speed to deliver feature phones to an enormous market in this region. To that end our focus was towards meeting that demand.

Through the advent of smartphones, the demand for power and efficiency has now grown dramatically. While we still retain our focus on efficiency and partnership we now see a market where high functionality and low-power is required and therefore we are building products that meet this demand.

To that end we’ve already launched the world’s first true octacore chipset in November 2013 – the MT6592 – and the world’s first 4G LTE octacore chipset MT6595 this month and our first 64-bit quadcore LTE SOC at MWC as we build out our LTE offering.

Our octacore chipsets enable handset brands to deliver a premium experience to multiple markets with reduced time to market, development costs and barriers to entry. And as smartphones continue to take over the global device market, MediaTek is helping telco providers address this increasing demand with affordable devices built from our sophisticated turnkey solutions.

As the markets see a range of new brands aimed at different market needs, we’re increasingly seeing competitive pressure and this affects all tiers. To that end we’re already providing our solutions to leading brands in markets around the world.

We have customers who have already penetrated into the US, South American and Western European markets. The chips will begin sampling to phone makers and carriers in the first half of this year, and it’s expected to arrive in products during the second half.

How big is MediaTek’s business beyond greater China, and how are you looking to grow this? Which regions are you focusing on?

MediaTek has been very strong in China, but MediaTek’s business is very much a global one. Today, nearly one in three mobile phones in the world is powered by MediaTek’s solutions. In 2012 MediaTek shipped 110 million smartphone chips and last year it doubled its shipments to 220 million units. This year we expect to see at least 25 percent growth.

We partner directly with over 100 house brands and over 20 operators worldwide. In each of the mobile communications, digital home, optical storage, wireless communication disciplines, MediaTek partners with well-known brands and customers across the world.

  • Top global smartphone brands: Lenovo, LG, Huawei, Sony, ZTE, Coolpad, Motorola, TCL/Alcatel
  • Tier-1 global TV brands:  Sony, Sharp, Samsung , LG, Phillps, Vizio
  • Tier-1 global Wi-Fi product brands: Belkin, D-Link
  • Content partners: Google (Android) Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo.
  • APAC:  IMO (Indonesia), I-Mobile (Thailand), Spice, Telkomsel and Micromax (India), Vodafone (Japan)
  • Latin America: America Movil and Telefonica (Latin America), Gradiente, Meu and Multilaser and NavCity (Brazil)

With strong partnerships with global customers, we are looking forward to having more offerings for Western markets like the US and Europe, which has a strong demand for full-featured smart devices, from 2014 and beyond.

Why is offering 64-bit processor technology important in the mobile market?

64-bit is the next step in processor technology for mobile. Though current user behavior may not require 64 bit processors, they soon will, especially with the rise of consumers using mobile devices for high-end gaming and video downloading and playback. MediaTek is focused on evolving customer needs and developing innovative, disruptive insights that will shape the global future of mobile technology.

And that’s why MediaTek is launching the 64-bit LTE SOC MT6732 at Mobile World Congress. MT6732 is MediaTek’s very first 64bit LTE SOC introduced in the market. Targeted towards mainstream devices, the new MT6732 sports ARM’s quadcore Cortex-A53 processor is clocked at 1.5GHz, providing high speed processing unmatched by its counterparts that are similarly priced.

Our aim is to change the industry structure into a new super-mid market and marginalise the traditional high- and low-end segments by making high performance devices affordable for everyone, maximising the capacity of technology innovation to unleash the potential of the Everyday Geniuses for the creation of a better world.

What are MediaTek’s main focus areas for 2014?

From 2014 and beyond, MediaTek will be dedicated to nurturing the next five billion of global middle class users into a generation of Everyday Geniuses, empowering them to develop, design, code and create with our inclusive technology.

Catering to this new global middle class, MediaTek is enabling the super-mid market of mobile devices. MediaTek will not only innovate for feature-rich and accessible technologies, but also offer a product portfolio that allows a wide range of connected devices to flourish – smartphones, tablets, wearables, HDTVs, and more. By maintaining a broad spectrum of products and services, MediaTek strives to help keep everything, and everyone, connected.

What are MediaTek’s key areas of differentiation with its rivals?

The key of strength of MediaTek is that it brings inclusive and innovative technology that is accessible to everyone. Since its founding in 1997, MediaTek has been making high-performance smart devices affordable to end users, through the creation of turnkey chipset solutions that enable our customers to bring the high-end connected multi-media performance and features to the mass market with feature-rich functionality, simplified development, minimised resources and reduced time to market. MediaTek is fast and reliable in delivering new technology and complete solutions first to market through innovation, partnership and efficiency

MediaTek has also established an ecosystem-friendly business model that takes advantage of open platforms to deliver the best products and services, as well as value-added services and apps for smart devices, at a reasonable price. It fully supports manufacturers, operators and developers in creating more valuable connected experiences that consumers love, wherever they are.

As Strategy Analytics forecasted, the fiercest battles in the smartphone industry in 2014 will be fought in the middle price-tiers in emerging markets, where ‘bang-per-buck’ is key. Any smartphone component supplier that can demonstrate both performance and value for money this year will put itself in a strong position, and having SOCs that can provide high performance without a high cost is where one of many strengths MediaTek has. MediaTek is well-positioned to capture the opportunities to come in this market.