Report: Market share of octa-core powered smartphones will slide this year

According to industry sources, the percentage of smartphones shipped with an octa-core processor will decline this year. The main reason is that branded and white-box smartphone vendors in China continue to roll out quad-core powered models in order to increase their market shares in the low to mid-range category. And while many manufacturers are excited about the true octa-core MT6592 chip from MediaTek, relatively few smartphone vendors have designed octa-core powered silicon into their products. These sources don't see demand for octa-core chips coming until next year.

The sources add that MediaTek has kept a fairly wide price gap between its quad-core and octa-core chips in order to keep demand flowing for the former. The speculation is that MediaTek isn't ready yet to use pricing as a way to drive business to the MT6592.

While the international version of the Samsung Galaxy S5 will feature Sammy's homegrown Exynos octa-core chip, the ubiquitous industry sources are not totally convinced that Samsung's new flagship will be the runaway hit that many expect it to be.

source: DigiTimes