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Mob i l i t y Fac e to Fac e
“Multi-core processing capability is fast becoming a vital feature of mobile SoC solutions, in smartphones & tablets” How are you looking at the Indian Smartphone and tablet market?
T
he smartphone and tablet market in India is currently enjoying a fantastic boom. A quick snapshot of the last two years tells that smartphone sales in the country grew approximately by 105% (YoY) in 2013, while the tablet sales grew by 56.4% to 4.14 million units against 2.66 million units in 2012, according to industry estimates. 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 now open to buyinga slightly future proof phone witha 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 Supermid 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 ourflagship 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. There willalso be a major transition from 32-bit to 64-bit computing, though it takes some time. We recently announced a family of LTE SoC – the quad-core MT6732 and the octacore MT6752 that will be available later this year that will start our journey into this world of 64-bit computing.
What will be your plans for the Indian manufacturers?
Dr. Finbarr Moynihan, GM – Corporate Sales International, MediaTek Inc.
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 wellbeing. Since the very beginning, our vision has been “to enrich and enhance everyone’s lives”. We have
aspired and succeeded in democratizing the technology.
What all things you are doing for the wearable markets? MediaTek has announced a wearable platform called Aster. This will be MediaTek’s entry platform for the wearable, and broader IoT (Internet of Things) markets can 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 Wear platform 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 solutionearlier 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. MediaTek’sLTE products include a series of platforms; the MT6290 multi-mode LTE modem, MT6752 64-bit octacore 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 devicesbased on MediaTekin 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. mobility may 2014 13
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