The Shining Star of the semiconductor industry is MediaTek which increased its profits by 90% in a horrible market.
2009 revenue was 40% up on 2008 at $3.5 billion.
It reckons it will ship 28% more in units in 2010 than it did in 2009 - 450 million chip-sets compared to 2008's 350 million for a profit margin around 56%.
Last year we carried three posts about MediaTek:
These posts provoked some perceptive and informed comments suggesting that MediaTek succeeds in the old fashioned way - going to its customers and showing them how to design in their chips.
Somehow there's nothing quite like a sales guy who can put on a white coat, go into a customer's product development lab, and show the engineers how to put his chip in a board and get it to work.
I am a UK ex-pat living and working in Taiwan. I fully agree that there is nothing quite like a sales guy who can get the chip to work in the customer's application, but there is an additional factor at work ... these Mediatek guys work very long hours, at least 6 days a week and are always available to their customers at the end of the phone ... 24hrs a day!
Not only the showing the customer's engineers how to put the chip on Board ,Mediatek also makes sure that the Customer knows how to setup the provided software to make the phone look different from other of its customers .
Some of the Mediatek success is due to excellent Analog Devices chips and ultra-reliable TTPCom software stack. Pitty TTPCom gone belly up and Analog Devices back to their bipolar junks leaving Taiwaneese who believed in CMOS at 40nm to make a success.
A very good 5 part blog on Mediatek can be found at http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/02/08/mediatek-part-1-beginnings-and-growth/
Thanks Manik, it's an interesting read