NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – In what may be a response to the proposed tie-up between Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics has announced that it is “cooperating” with Taiwan-based MediaTek, the No. 2 supplier of processor chips for smartphones, to integrate its NFC technology into MediaTek reference designs.
ST is not commenting on the extent of the cooperation, and MediaTek, which has been losing market share to No. 1 smartphone chip supplier Qualcomm this year, did not respond to questions from NFC Times and did not separately announce cooperation or a deal with ST. But ST said in a statement to NFC Times that while MediaTek processors “do not integrate directly (with) our NFC technology and IP,” the scope of the cooperation between MediaTek and STMicroelectronics is to “use ST’s NFC controllers and secure elements integrated into the reference platforms provided by MediaTek to OEMs.”
MediaTek has been losing market share in its main mid-tier market in China, with rival Qualcomm scoring design wins with such fast-growing smartphone OEMs as Oppo and Vivo. The losses will mean MediaTek will almost certainly see its shipments of smartphone processors fall substantially this year from the approximately 500 million smartphone processors it shipped last year.
