Samsung now rumored to eye MediaTek for some handsets

It's rumors like this that make you wonder if there's more to the breakup between Samsung and Qualcomm than first believed. It is, after all, not exactly unreasonable for the Korean manufacturer to push its own Exynos chips to the forefront, but little did we expect that it might be pushing Qualcomm out of its products in more ways than one. Now MediaTek is entering the picture, with Taiwanese media painting a scenario where the chip maker will be present in some of Samsung's future smartphones.

There is no denying the fact that Qualcomm owns the market when it comes to mobile chips, but its reign is being threatened on all sides. At the high end, you now have Samsung's new Exynos chip trying to take a bit out of it. Indeed, the processor found on the Galaxy S6 seems to be running circles around the Snapdragon 810. It remains unsubstantiated whether Qualcomm's foremost processor is indeed too hot to handle, but Samsung's chip might just be even hotter. Figuratively, of course.

On the other end of the price and performance spectrum, Qualcomm has always been sharing the spot with MediaTek, but the latter is ambitiously moving up to change public perception. It's newer technology showcased at MWC 2015 lends a bit of credence to those claims, with performance almost reaching Qualcomm's tiers. Whether or not MediaTek's famous affordable price tags will stay the same in the face of higher performance remains to be seen.

As for the new Samsung and MediaTek relationship, neither company is saying a word, but MediaTek General Manager Zhu Shan-gzu seemed almost too happy to blurt it out. He says that they have "made progress little by little in some direction", referring to the campaign to win Samsung over.

So will some of Samsung's next smartphones run on MediaTek chips? That is a possibility, but it will probably not be as big a splash as the Galaxy S6 change. If it ever comes to pass, Samsung is more likely to put the chips inside some of its less risky products, like a Tizen smartphone or some of its lower tier lines. Whether that blossoms into a deeper relationship will depend on whether MediaTek can meet the expectations that it is hyping.

SOURCE: CTIMES

VIA: G for Games