Qualcomm maintained its unchallenged leadership position, but saw its market share fall, as other rivals stormed into the low cost smart phone market to undercut the mobile chip giant on price and eroded its position
Qualcomm’s market share slipped from 52% in 2014 to 42% in 2015 in terms of revenue. Yet, the mobile CPU giant would perform better in 2016, as it has been diversifying its product line into low cost mobile application processors.
MediaTek of Taiwan and Apple Inc. grabbed distant No.2 and No.3 position, commanding 21% and 19% share, respectively.
Closely following was Samsung Electronics, which doubled its shipments from a year ago riding on the success of its 14nm FinFET Exynos mobile application processor.
Intel made big pushes in 2015 with its shipments up 66% from a year ago, but just made up 1% of the market.
Sravan Kundojjala, Associate Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “2015 proved to be a transition year for Qualcomm as the company’s flagship APs faced strong competition from vertical vendors such as Samsung LSI. Qualcomm, however, capitalized on its mid-range 64-bit chips and overtook Apple to take the 64-bit leadership crown in 2015. I believe that Qualcomm’s strengthened product portfolio will boost its shipments in 2016. ”
Stuart Robinson, executive director of the Strategy Analytics, added, “Samsung LSI, Leadcore and Rockchip registered a triple-digit growth in their AP shipments in 2015 while MediaTek, HiSilicon and Intel registered a double-digit growth. HiSilicon and Samsung LSI, in particular, capitalized on their design-wins at their respective in-house customers. We predict continued momentum for many of these players in 2016.”