The Success Story of MediaTek in the Chinese Mobile Phone IC Market

As the structure of the mobile phone industry has changed and as the key factors affecting competition between mobile phone vendors have been transformed, the lion' s share of the profits in the Chinese mobile phone market have gone, first to the leading international mobile phone vendors, then to those Chinese mobile phone manufacturers with a production and domestic sales license, to the Korean and Taiwanese mobile phone firms, and then to Chinese mobile phone design houses. Since 2005, the mobile phone reference designs supplied by Taiwanese company MediaTek have been transforming the competitive balance in the Chinese mobile phone market. Benefiting from its innovative business model, MediaTek' s share of the mobile phone IC solution market in China has shot up from less than 2% to over 50%. This report examines MediaTek' s innovative new business model.