Taipei, Jan. 29 (CNA) MediaTek Inc., one of Taiwan's leading integrated circuit (IC) designers, said it has secured orders to provide Indian smartphone vendor Micromax with its first quad core smartphone chip.
Micromax, the third-largest smartphone maker in India, will use the MediaTek chip in production of its A116 Canvas HD smartphone, which is scheduled to hit the Indian market in early February.
The Taiwanese firm unveiled the quad core smartphone platform Dec. 11, 2012. The company said Micromax is its first customer for the quad core platform, which the IC designer said is able to deliver premium multimedia capabilities but boasts low power consumption.
MediaTek said Micromax's A116 Canvas HD is a 5-inch smartphone model equipped with the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system and an 8 megapixel camera.
Taiwan-based Acer Inc., the world's fourth-largest personal computer vendor, said it will use MediaTek's quad core chips for production of its 8-inch and 10-inch tablet computers that will hit the market in the fourth quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the slow-season effects of the first quarter, Nomura Securities said it expects MediaTek' consolidated sales for the three-month period to fall 8 percent to 14 percent from the previous quarter.
In the fourth quarter, the IC designer posted NT$26.73 billion (US$903 million) in consolidated sales, down 9.28 percent from the third quarter. The fourth quarter figure was lower than the company's earlier sales forecast, which said sales would range between NT$28.9 billion and NT$30.9 billion.
Nomura Securities said, however, that MediaTek's sales for January are expected to rise more than 10 percent from December's NT$7.58 billion on the back of an increase in its smartphone chip shipments.
The brokerage anticipates that MediaTek's smartphone chip shipments will rise about 20 percent this month from a month earlier to 12 million units.
MediaTek is scheduled to hold an investor conference Feb. 4 to release its fourth quarter results and give sales guidance for the first quarter of this year.
(By Jackson Chang and Frances Huang)
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