It was previously stated that MediaTek had already topped the Android smartphone SoC market in 2021 with a 46 percent share, surpassing its competitor Qualcomm, which had a 35 percent market share in 2021. One would suppose that this signals the end of Qualcomm's hegemony in the Android smartphone market.
Counterpoint Research, on the other hand, has produced a follow-up report to the research. The research highlights the pricing ranges where Qualcomm, MediaTek, Exynos, HiSilicon, and UNISOC are winning the fight for the biggest market share among Android chip suppliers.
A closer look at the analysis indicates that the majority of MediaTek's market share gain in 2021 will come from the low-mid tier wholesale pricing sector (sub-$299), led by high demand for the Dimensity 700, 800, and Helio series chipsets. Qualcomm, on the other hand, dominated the mid-range and premium flagship markets with about 50% market share across all price brackets above $300, with the exception of the $700-$799 price bracket, where Samsung had a 46 percent market share.
But the issue remains: why has Qualcomm turned away from low-end markets, and how did MediaTek win the low-end market following Qualcomm's slow exit?
According to the research, the rationale for these market trend shifts is due to a global chip scarcity. Because Qualcomm was unable to secure chip supply from both TSMC and Samsung, the firm instead focused on ramping up production for its 700 and 800 series Snapdragon chipsets, resulting in increased revenue and profitability.
However, with Qualcomm failing to provide good value for money with its 400 and 600 series Snapdragon chipsets in 2021, phone makers opted to choose MediaTek instead for their lower-end budget smartphones. With their Dimensity 700 to 1200 series, MediaTek succeeded to bring capable and cheap 5G chipsets to market in 2021, with performance on par, if not exceeding, competitive CPUs in the same price band. With the release of its Dimensity 8000 and 9000 series chipsets in 2022, MediaTek is likely to gain a share of the higher-end premium Android market in the next year.
In addition, the research provides information on Samsung's Exynos, Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin, and UNISOC chipsets in the industry in 2021. Apart from the Samsung Galaxy S21 series, which was equipped with Exynos, the majority of Samsung's A, M, and F series smartphones were not equipped with Exynos. Its proportion of the low-mid category ($100-$299) fell from 17 percent to 7 percent, and its share of the mid-high segment fell from 13 percent in 2020 to 6 percent in 2021.
In 2021, UNISOC forecasted rapid growth in smartphones costing around $200. UNISOC chipsets exclusively catered to phones priced under $100 in 2020. However, in 2021, realme, Motorola, and Samsung debuted phones using the Tiger series SoC, promising superior performance in the chipsets than its similarly priced competitors in the market.
Last but not least, HiSilicon's SoCs had a 16 percent share of phones costing $500 or more in 2021, down from 30 percent the previous year owing to the US trade restriction. It's still using the inventory it had before the prohibition. HiSilicon's market share is likely to continue to decline by the end of 2022 as its stockpile depletes. Huawei has already begun to use Qualcomm SoCs in their recent releases, but only for 4G.
