Qualcomm, MediaTek Duel Over No. 1 Status in US

pcmag.com:

MediaTek this week announced that it is now the No. 1-selling chipset vendor in Android phones in the US, but Qualcomm disputes the claim. The issue appears to be in the murky realm of how the numbers are calculated.

There's a bit more than bragging rights involved in MediaTek's meteoric rise. Where the company was once limited to low-cost tablets and bargain-basement phones in the US, it's been taking a bigger and bigger bite out of Qualcomm's midrange business in Qualcomm's home market. Showing that momentum is on its side is a big deal for MediaTek.

MediaTek based its claim on fourth-quarter market-share figures from analysis firm IDC. Qualcomm responded with contradictory claims from competing firm Counterpoint. Both Counterpoint and IDC agree that Qualcomm is No. 1 for the year of 2021 as a whole. Analysis firms all use different, proprietary data collection methods and it's common for them to disagree somewhat, although not usually to this extent. Here's how the two estimates compare:

(Note that the numbers above are slightly different from what MediaTek quoted on its presentation slide. IDC says the numbers above are correct.)

IDC's mobile phone research director, Anthony Scarsella, said MediaTek was helped in the fourth quarter by two factors. First, the company had three top-selling phones: the Samsung A12, the Samsung A32, and the new Motorola G Pure, which debuted in the fourth quarter.

Public Counterpoint data agrees that the Samsung Galaxy A12 and Galaxy A32 5G were the two most popular Android phones in the US in October 2021, with a total of 9% market share.

Google also played a role by abandoning Qualcomm for its own Tensor chipset. If Google had stuck with Qualcomm, MediaTek wouldn't have gained the