Taiwan’s MediaTek scores chip in Sprint’s latest smartphone

Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek is announcing today that it has gotten its mobile processing chips into a Sprint smartphone for the first time. It’s the first time that MediaTek’s chips have been used in a device on a major U.S. carrier network.

Hsinchu, Taiwan-based MediaTek collaborated with Sprint to create the LG X power, which features the MediaTek Helio P10 chipset, which emphasizes a combination of performance, power efficiency, and compact size. That’s a victory for MediaTek over rivals such as Intel and Qualcomm.

“Collaborating with Sprint to enable a WorldMode smartphone based on our MediaTek Helio series chipset is an important milestone for MediaTek,” said Mohit Bhushan, a MediaTek vice president, in a statement. “We are actively investing in advanced modem feature development for Sprint’s networks and look forward to many more devices in 2017 and beyond.”

The MediaTek Helio P10 offers high-performance 4G LTE eight-core processors as well as support for older modem standards such as CDMA2000, WCDMA, HSPA+, and GSM. MediaTek spent a lot of time optimizing its LTE carrier aggregation feature for Sprint’s LTE+ network to deliver super-fast data speeds, increased capacity, and improved data service for its customers.

“The LG X power is the first adoption of a MediaTek chipset for the Sprint network and the MediaTek helio P10 brings to our customers the power of the Sprint LTE+ network at an affordable price point,” said Ryan Sullivan, Sprint’s vice president of product development, in a statement.

The MediaTek helio P10 series integrates a suite of multimedia features, including gaming-quality graphics and HD screen support for the LG X power’s 5.3-inch HD touchscreen display.

The LG X power is available today for Boost Mobile customers, and comes next week to Sprint. The smartphone features include an 8-megapixel (MP) rear-facing camera, 5MP front-facing camera, a 1.8GHz octa-core processor, and the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS.

MediaTek was founded in 1997. Over the years, it has built a lot of chips for wireless networking, consumer home entertainment devices, and mobile devices. The mobile business has become about two-thirds of its overall business. MediaTek said it has about 35 percent global market share in mobile devices, including everything from 2G feature phones to 4G LTE smartphones.

One of the big reasons that MediaTek is able to break into Sprint is its new support for CDMA. In the past, it had focused on GSM-based smartphones. The CDMA support sets MediaTek up to win other business as well. Overall, MediaTek employs more than 15,000 people, and its revenues in 2015 were $6.7 billion.

Above: Specs on the Sprint and Boost Mobile LG X power smartphone with MediaTek chips.

Image Credit: MediaTek