Qualcomm, MediaTek Fill Vacuum HiSilicon Left in Smartphones

By Alan Patterson, EETimes (June 15, 2021)

Qualcomm and MediaTek have plugged the gap that Huawei left when the US government effectively forced Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon out of the smartphone chip business last year as part of the trade war between China and the US.

Chinese government-backed Huawei and its chip-design unit HiSilicon were at the top of the heap in the world’s smartphone business and were poised to dominate the 5G business just as the administration of former US President Donald Trump banned chip foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) from supplying semiconductors to HiSilicon.

At this time last year, HiSilicon accounted for about 15 percent of TSMC’s sales, making the chip designer the second-largest TSMC customer after Apple. Now, TSMC no longer supplies chips to HiSilicon, and that left a huge gap open to Qualcomm and MediaTek.

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