How are you looking at the Indian Smartphone and tablet market?
The smartphone and tablet market in India is currently enjoying a fantastic boom. A quick snapshot of the year that went by tells us that smartphone sales in the country grew approximately 105% (yoy) in 2013, while the tablet sales grew 56.4% to 4.14 million units against 2.66 million units in 2012, according to industry estimates. So obviously, there are some great growth figures here, with big potential for further growth in smart connected devices like smartphones and tablets in the coming years.
Meanwhile, we have been noticing a few trends emerging. Markets like India, China and South East Asia, are not only focused on low-end smart phones, but are also considering devices with HD displays, higher-end multimedia and better multi-tasking capabilities. People are open to buying a slightly future proof phone and that is the tipping point, the fact that they are now looking for a 4 or 4.5inch display screen, dual-core, quad-core or octa-core multi processor and 3G. There is a lot of scope for growth here. This is part of a major market trend we see called the Super-mid market, where the growth of the middle-class populations world-wide, but especially in Asia, with increased consumer spending power, will drive the adoption of more smart connected devices that offer the best performance at reasonable prices. We see this trend already starting in India and we believe it will continue for many years to come.
There is also growing demand for increased performance while creating greater power efficiency that can only be achieved through an optimized multi-core system approach. This means that multi-core processing capability is fast becoming a vital feature of mobile SoC solutions, in smartphones & tablets. As such, MediaTek is taking the lead to improve battery life in next-generation tablet and mobile device designs by providing more flexibility to match tasks with the right-size core for better computational, graphical and multimedia performance.
What will be the next big thing you are expecting in coming years in mobile technology?
There are going to be multiple things. Firstly, there will be products with big.LITTLE CPU architectures. Earlier this year, MediaTek also announced a product called the MT6595; which is our flagship LTE product. We will see architectures that have big.LITTLE configurations again to give users four big cores for performance and four little cores for lower processing tasks. We will deliver these platforms with optimized hardware and software scheduler solutions to take best advantage of the higher processing power of the big cores where that is needed (for example for web browsing, heavy gaming etc.), but also the better power efficiency of the LITTLE cores for less demanding applications (such as social networking, messaging applications).
There will also be a major transition from 32-bit to 64-bit computing and that’s going to take some time as well, with 64-bit hardware, 64-bit versions of the software, all of this will take place over a period of time. We recently announced a family of LTE SoC – the quad-core MT6732 and the octa-core MT6752 that will be available later this year that will start our journey into this world of 64-bit computing.
This combination of multi core, big.LITTLE and transition from 34 bit to 64 bit is probably going to define the higher end space for the next couple of years. We also continue to innovate at the entry part of the market, where our highly optimized dual-core MT6572 is bringing new levels of performance and helping reduce overall device costs for Entry 3G smartphones – further democratizing the technology and delivering on our brand promise to offer technology in the most inclusive manner possible.
What will be your plans for the Indian manufacturers?
Our philosophy has driven our belief that technology should not exist for its own sake but should be inclusive, giving everyone the ability to access the internet to improve their social and economic well-being. Since the very beginning, our vision has been “to enrich and enhance everyone’s lives”. We have aspired and succeeded in democratizing the technology. And this has further enabled the keen exploration of everyday life. We aim to deliver these in a more inclusive fashion that allows more people to enjoy the premium features at an affordable price. As such, we continue to partner with and support a broad range of customers, including all the major Indian mobile brands to deliver a rich array of products to the Indian consumer.
What all things you are doing for the wearable markets?
MediaTek has announced a platform called Aster. It’s a wearable platform, built from our highly integrated, very small and very low power platforms, that we have been putting out for feature phones for years but has scalability to an applications ecosystem where you can support a certain amount of applications on the platform. This will be MediaTek’s entry platform for the wearable, and broader IoT (Internet of Things) markets that will take advantage of the rich ecosystem of developers that are already familiar with the MediaTek platform and can build all kinds of innovative devices using our turnkey reference design as a starting point. There was an announcement by Google on the Android Wear platform which is focused more on the higher tier wearable devices, and we are a lead partner with Google on the Android Wearplatform as well. Later there will be products based on the platform, from the Android universe. MediaTek is one of the few companies that has all the technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, Android platform, GPS, and the ability to put them all together in highly integrated and innovative platforms.
Tell us more about your first LTE modem platform which you have showcased at CES this year.
This year, our focus is on LTE. We unveiled our first LTE solution earlier in the year at CES 2014. Following CES, we have also announced a range of SoCs from high end, to mid-high, to mainstream SoC solutions for LTE. LTE is coming in all markets but at different timelines and different paces depending on the different needs of the markets.
MediaTek’s LTE products include a series of platforms; the MT6290 multi-mode LTE modem, MT6752 64-bit octa-core and MT6732 64-bit quad-core SoC. These are all products that are more integrated solutions for LTE. These will start to show up in devices towards the second half of this year. We expect to see launches of LTE devices based on MediaTek in many countries later this year.
What new things are you doing in the home entertainment segment which you have planned for Q2 of 2014?
MediaTek has a strong portfolio of home entertainment platforms, such as DTV and Blu-ray DVD, where we see the growing trend towards smart, connected devices that also require more CPU, GPU, multimedia and applications processing capabilities with higher-level operating system. We expect connected, smart TVs and other home-entertainment devices like STB, DVD, IP-streaming boxes to continue to drive growth for our platforms and products.
