The smartphone applications processor market grew 44 percent year-on-year to reach €3.25 billion in the second quarter of the year, according to new research.
Strategy Analytics ranked Qualcomm, Apple, MediaTek, Samsung and Spreadtrum as the top five players in the market between April and June.
Qualcomm maintained its lead in the market with 53 percent revenue share, followed by Apple with 15 percent. MediaTek, with 11 percent, overtook Samsung for the number three spot.
According to the report, MediaTek’s and Spreadtrum’s growth is thanks to the smartphone boom witnessed in emerging markets.
Strategy Analytics’ Sravan Kundojjala said the improving performance of the two companies could legitimately be seen as a threat to the market leaders.
“MediaTek and Spreadtrum’s improving global footprint coupled with their maturing product portfolio could spell a threat to global players such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia and Intel,” he commented.
However, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 chip family is set to hold the leading market share in the second half of 2013 thanks to its LTE technology, Strategy Analytics said.
According to CSS Insight, over 730 million LTE-capable smartphones will be sold in 2017, up from 220 million in 2013.
Meanwhile, Strategy Analytics also reported that the global tablet processor market posted 46 percent year-on-year growth to €560 million in Q2 2013.
Apple extended its lead to a 34 percent share, followed by Samsung and MediaTek, which both just fell shy of 10 percent.
The report authors again picked out MediaTek’s performance as worthy of comment. Although it was “a late comer” to the market, it has made “strong progress” thanks to “significant design-wins” with Acer, Asus and Lenovo, they noted.
Stuart Robinson, Director of the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service, said that Intel’s Bay Trail chip, and Nvidia’s Tegra 4 chip are “poised” for growth in the second half of this year.