MediaTek doubles its target for 4G chips to be shipped this year

With low priced 4G smartphones extremely popular in emerging markets, the chip-supplier for most of the manufacturers in this niche, has just doubled its target for 2014 shipments. MediaTek president Hsieh Ching-chiang has announced that his company is expecting to ship 30 million units of 4G solutions for this year. That is up from an earlier forecast of 15 million units.

For the second quarter, MediaTek earned $12.55 billion NT ($418.78 million USD). That represents a healthy 23.8% gain from the first quarter of the year, and a whopping 86.9% gain year-over-year. Gross margin for Q2 rose 1.3 percentage points sequentially, to 49.6%. That is a 6.4pp gain in gross margin year-over-year. For the first half of the year, profits amounted to $22.69 billion NT ($753 million USD).

Growth is expected to continue in the third quarter, as the company estimates that revenue for the period will expand 5% to 13%. Chipset solutions will see increased shipments for the July through September period, according to Hsieh. The executive also says that it will start to "ramp up" production of the MT-6752 and MT-6732 4G chips in October. In December, MediaTek will start shipping its 64-bit, octa-core MT-6795 chip. According to the company president, next-gen 4G entry-level solutions will be ready for shipping as soon as early next year.

source: DigiTimes