By Herman Lai, posted Dec 5, 2012 at 3:46 AM, 653 views,

Qualcomm Reveals New Chipsets To Battle Asian Chip Makers For China’s Smartphone Market

Qualcomm has been preparing to gain market share in China, where the company had customized its chipsets and lowered its pricing to cater Chinese wireless operator’s networks and local smartphone makers. Today, the industry leader announced expansion of the S4 line with two new quad-core Snapdragons destined China — MSM8226 and MSM8626 CPUs, which will allow more high-end smartphones to emerge from local smartphone makers.

Both the MSM8226 and MSM8626 processors are fabricated using the 28nm technology node, which will come with an Adreno 305 GPU with support for 1080p video capture and display, up to 13MP cameras, built-in support for various dual SIM network designs, a GPS core that support GLONASS (a Russian radio-based satellite navigation system) and Beidou (a Chinese satellite navigation system) on board. Noteworthy, Chinese smartphone maker Meizu recently launched MX2 is also said to aim at the Russian smartphone market as well.

Qualcomm’s new chipsets were also tuned to address China specific requirements with support for TD-SCDMA. TD-SCDMA is a proprietary 3G standard that developed and used in China, licensed to the world’s largest carrier — China Mobile. The new Qualcomm chipsets might help to accelerate the partnership between Apple and China Mobile, since Apple has yet to produce an iPhone compatible with TD-SCDMA.

Furthermore, these two new chipsets will put pressure on MediaTek. MediaTek is a famous Taiwanese chipset maker that favored by second and third-tier smartphone makers across China, because its chipsets are affordable and efficient. Last month, MediaTek is reportedly to bring 8-core mobile processor MTK6599 to the Chinese market next year, which is likely to support 4G LTE, TD-SCDMA and WCDMA network. In all likelihood, it will be one of the most critical chipset vendors in China that Qualcomm would like to overpower.

Qualcomm is the industry leader in developing mobile chipsets. To continue to take the lead, Qualcomm have strived to capture the growth opportunity in emerging markets like China, the transition from 2G to 3G technology is underway at a full swing at these regions, and that’s why we see the new chipsets add support for China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA network. Moreover, Qualcomm’s chipsets have been very attractive to popular homegrown handset makers like Xiaomi and OPPO, who are offering high-end specs with affordable price.

Source: Qualcomm’s Press Release, Engadget