MediaTek is eager to launch its own brand promotion program

MediaTek is eager to launch its own branding program, although the Taiwanese chip design company is used to "hide" behind customers.

At the April 23 new brand launch, MediaTek's chief marketing officer, Johan Lode-nius, delivered two core messages: first, the customer "asked" MediaTek to step up to boost their premium capability, and MediaTek aimed to target the so-called "super midrange market". "This will allow us to cover 80% of the huge product line, which means that MediaTek starts from the middle and goes up (the high-end market) and goes down." Zhang Weili, general manager of MediaTek China, said.

To a large extent, the urgency of MediaTek's brand is not unrelated to the "Red Rice Gate" of last year: MediaTek had hoped to use the industry's first eight nuclear chip to establish its position in the high-end market, the result of this product on the red Rice was priced at 699 yuan Millet, which makes a lot of no cost advantages of mobile phones The manufacturer simply gave up the purchase.

Some media said that MediaTek in "Tears of money", although several star product sales soared, but it has lost more customers, as well as testing the high-end opportunities. "Our customers are becoming more brand customers from those small vendors in Shenzhen, a new phase, and they are very clear about MediaTek's appeal." "Zhang Weili said.

The embarrassment for MediaTek is that when it comes to branded customers, it must confront Qualcomm and Intel, the two chip giants who have made Shenzhen the main battleground since last year, especially Intel. They all launched the reference design (this is MediaTek's business model, which provides a complete solution to the development of underfunded customers, in extreme cases, as long as a mobile phone shell can be shipped) business, Qualcomm even plans to launch a chip every time, the first launch of the reference design, That would, in some ways, provoke a backlash from big clients such as Samsung.

In their own stronghold, defeated by their own killer? This is definitely not what MediaTek wants to see.

Rebound

Since the third quarter of last year, MediaTek's sales have soared. It is reported that in the quarter, MediaTek shipped more than 65 million smartphone chips to the domestic market, occupying more than 50% of the market share. And the eight nuclear products, although not to enter the high-end market, but according to MediaTek general manager Xiaiqingjiang revealed that the first quarter of this year, eight nuclear products MT6592 profit accounted for more than 20%. He did not disclose specific sales, but said the data are "very good", "after all, it began to mass production last December." "Xiaiqingjiang said.

MediaTek appears to be on a strong rebound, with the official announcement that revenues reached 17.429 billion yuan in March this year, a record high for the company's single monthly revenue, up 84.84% from a year earlier. It shipped up to 220 million of smartphone products last year, a full increase from 110 million in 2012.

One important reason is that a series of events, including a partnership agreement with the old rival, and the accumulation of technology in the last two years, have enabled MediaTek to gradually fill in the 3G era that had been missed. Ku, a finance chief at MediaTek, said in an analyst meeting that Qualcomm was 1 to 2 ahead of MediaTek in the 4G era, but this has been a lot better than in the 3G era, with Qualcomm leading 7 to 8 quarters.

For example, MediaTek and Granville's CDMA eight nuclear program, although also need to pay a patent licensing fees to Qualcomm, but compared directly to Qualcomm fee is nearly 2% cheaper. Most importantly, domestic handset manufacturers finally in the Qualcomm platform, there is another stable supply chain supplies protection, which let them in front of Qualcomm, have a certain bargaining power.

Even Google is considering working with MediaTek, and the industry is rumoured that MediaTek's first 64-bit 4G smartphone chip will get orders for Google's own products under 100 dollars in the second half of the year.

At the end of last year, Xiaiqingjiang a high-profile pitch to MediaTek, "eight-core-first, 4G-bar, 64-bit finale," as this year's fight against Qualcomm's combat strategy. "In the age of the feature machine, we are positioning ourselves as fast followers, and in the age of the smart machines we have to be leaders." Zhang Weili told the Economic Observer.

Therefore, the brand is so important. Johan Lodenius said MediaTek's definition of the "super midrange Market" price range is between 79 and 399 U.S. dollars, and red Rice uses eight nuclear products, a relatively high-end products to reach the 100 U.S. dollars, which is far from MediaTek's ideal high-end.

MediaTek's chairman, Tsai, has come to Johan Lodenius, who spent a year finishing the brand. It's not uncommon for Chua to show enough latitude on the top. In the marketing communications team, there are people who have h&m advertising ideas for clothing brands, who are trying to inject more elements into the engineer's culture of MediaTek.

But it's not that easy, "if that's the way Intel makes the brand, it's going to be very expensive." "Johan Lodenius said. Qualcomm last year vigorously promoted the "骁丽 Dragon" brand, has invested heavily in the video site, but this year they almost canceled the investment.

Charybdis

Intel is menacing, and for MediaTek, it may be a more formidable enemy than Qualcomm.

Shenzhen Intelligent Terminal Circle has been circulating "Intel set of products 5 U.S. dollars." The new CEO Division has valued Intel's redesigned eco-chain in Shenzhen, which is willing to attract more partners with high subsidies. In the PC era, Intel defeated AMD in this way.

Last November, an Intel executive at a financial analyst meeting hinted at the cost to partner subsidies, or even the cost of design, for partners who, after adopting Intel's latest mobile-chip product, would be more costly to manufacture than the arm architecture.

Sources say Intel's total subsidy this year will be over $1 billion trillion. Intel currently uses chips for tablets at a slightly higher price than $20 trillion, but some shipping partners will receive less than 10 dollars.

The company's demand for tablet computing is four times times higher, and it is no longer limited to brand makers, and it's going to be with MediaTek Qiangbai (no brand, or OEM). The market is not to be underestimated, and the division says more than 100 million tablet PCs are sold in Shenzhen each year. This is a dumbbell-shaped market, one end is Apple and Samsung, one end is white card manufacturers, the middle is those who do not invest too much resources Lenovo, HP ...

Is MediaTek under pressure? "I believe that unconventional business practices may have a short-term effect, but in the long run we still think the industry will go in the right direction," he said. "Xiaiqingjiang said.

But rivals have learned the same set of MediaTek. "Our strength lies in our sensitivity to the market, for example, when we first launched the 8 core, our competitors initially disagreed with us, but then they did the same thing." "Zhang Weili said," and our support for customers, they always in the shortest possible time, with the least amount of manpower to make a cost-effective products. ”

According to Yeng Chen, vice president of Qualcomm Mobile computing products, there may be only thousands of items to be tested when Qualcomm only makes chips, but now this number is tens of thousands of or even a hundred thousand of. In theory, the more the Qualcomm tests are done, the shorter the delivery cycle will be. A Shenzhen developer, who declined to be named, told the Economic Observer that Qualcomm and Intel were stepping up their manpower in Shenzhen, and that they would fly from Beijing and Shanghai as soon as their customers had any problems. "These vendors are no longer just trying to rely on a cost-competitive product, they also need to differentiate, we have recently been intensively communicating with them, they are happy to see our changes." "Xiaiqingjiang said.

He did not reveal how MediaTek would respond to Intel's response, and MediaTek seemed more concerned about the immediate 4G market. Domestic handset manufacturers are swarming into the 4G, which makes the technology relatively mature Qualcomm products, this year has been in a shortage of state. MediaTek's 64-bit 4G chip is also due to be produced in the second half of the year, which is the best time to confront Qualcomm.

They also released products for wearable devices, which are also valued by Qualcomm and Intel. In short, MediaTek's counterattack has begun, but before that, it must first ensure that competitors will not copy its "lair".