Shipments of smartphone-use application processors in China are expected to reach 122 million units in the second quarter of 2015, up 17.6% sequentially and 18.4% on year, according to Digitimes Research.
Among the top-three AP suppliers in China, MediaTek, which saw its market share slide to 46.8% in the first quarter of 2015 due to competition from Spreadtrum Communications in the 3G segment, is expected to ramp up its share to 48.4% in the second quarter, buoyed by rising shipments of LTE and 3G products, said Digitimes Research.
Although Qualcomm will see its AP shipments to China continue to increase in the second quarter, its share will decline to 21.3% in the quarter, from 23.6% a quarter earlier as the pace of its product updates was not as fast as that of MediaTek's.
Spreadtrum managed to ramp up its share to 17.4% in the first quarter but is expected to see its share slip to 15.2% in the second quarter as shipments of its WCDMA solutions will be affected by the offerings from MediaTek.
In terms of AP architecture, ARM's Cortex-A53 CPUs accountedfor 36.1% of total smartphone APs shipped in the China market in the first quarter, with the ratio likely to climb to 43.1% in the second quarter, Digitimes Research estimated.