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New section in development for Zoran Corporation article

Market position and competitors

Yearly revenues (million US$), 2000-2010

2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
68	100	141	224	376	396	496	507	439	380	357

Revenues (million US$) and revenue mix by segment for selected periods

Period	Revenues	DVD	Digital Camera	Printer Imaging	DTV/Set-top box	Mobile phone/Other
2004	376	61%	10%	22%	7%	-
2005	397	38%	28%	21%	13%	-
Q4 2007	129	27%	32%	19%	17%	- / 5%
Q4 2008	75	10%	36%	23%	23%	7% / 1%
Q3 2009	116	15%	30%	12%	39%	4%
Q4 2009	93	15%	37%	29%	15%	4% / -
Q4 2010	73	8%	45%	22%	13% / 12%	-

Video CD, DVD player and DVD recorder chips

Early competitors of Zoran with expertise in chips with MPEG decoding capability included included C-Cube, which was first-to-market with several MPEG decoding and encoding chip technologies, and ESS Technology. C-Cube profited from strong traction of MPEG-1 decoding-based Video CD players in Asia, first in Japan and Korea and subsequently in China in the mid-to-late 1990s. After a period with high chip prices and profit margins dominated by C-Cube as the only viable chip supplier, ESS Technology took advantage of its more cost-effective solutions and after a price war captured a significant part of the VCD player chip market, with the resulting lower cost of VCD players fuelling further unit growth in the market. Zoran did not participate in the Video CD chip market, although it did develop MPEG-2-based solutions for Super Video CD players, a new standard that later emerged in China which offered better image quality while still using standard CD media. The Super VCD player chip market was dominated by ESS Technology.

However, Zoran soon established itself with viable chip solutions for DVD players and started capturing market share and saw strong strong revenue growth around the year 2000 as DVD players started to become popular in developed markets. C-Cube retreated from the VCD/DVD player chip market, and after being acquired by LSI Logic concentrated on developing chipsets for DVD recorders, an application that requires MPEG-2 encoding as well as decoding.

DVD chipset suppliers Zoran and ESS Technology were joined in the early 2000s by Taiwanese company MediaTek, which by 2003 had captured a significant part of the market, benefitting from its expertise in optical drive servo electronics, which companies such as Zoran originally did not possess. Although ESS Technology regained some traction by being first to market with chips supporting MPEG-4-based DivX decoding, which it would continue to ship for a number years, ESS lost its competitiveness for cost-effective DVD player chip solutions. Meanwhile, Zoran continued to achieve success with its Vaddis product line, offering cost-effective solutions for low-cost Chinese manufacturers, as well as supplying higher-end solution for brand name DVD players, for which it developed its HDXtreme upscaling chips with HDMI output.

A severe inventory correction in China in 2004, at a time when Zoran had significant share of the low-cost DVD player chip market there, caused a severe decline in demand for DVD player chips fuelled by excess inventories, and resulted in substantial average selling price erosion and lower profit margins for DVD player chip companies, from which Zoran's DVD chip business never recovered, although it continued to achieve success in high-end DVD players. To continue to compete in the cost-sensitive segment, Zoran had to develop a DVD player SoC solution integrating a DVD optical servo front-end, an area where competitor MediaTek had a significant advantage. Competition was further increased by the emergence of new low-cost competitors such as Taiwanese company Sunplus.

Meanwhile, Zoran had made significant investments into the development of chipsets for DVD recorders, which were for a number of years expected to become the ubiquitous replacement for VCRs. DVD recorders required chip expertise in MPEG-2 encoding (a task significantly more complex than decoding) and recordable optical storage technology. However, LSI (formerly C-Cube) dominated the DVD recorder chip market, and sales of DVD recorders fell far short of initial expectations. Meanwhile hard disk drive-based recorders became a viable alternative for recordable DVD technology and later faster internet connections made network-based delivery viable. As a result, Zoran was never able to recoup the investments it made in its Activa product line for DVD recorders.

Digital camera chips

The chip market for digital cameras continued to be dominated for a long time by the captive, internal chip designs of brand name Japanese digital camera manufacturers. Zoran's COACH line of digital camera chips, which had developed from its expertise in JPEG codec chips, was widely used by ODMs in Taiwan and other countries who manufactured digital cameras for lesser-known brands, but which over time also started manufacturing increasing numbers of digital cameras models for brand name manufacturers.

Gradually, Zoran captured more designs from major digital camera manufacturers, resulting in a gradual but steady growth of it digital camera chip sales, which became the largest revenue source for Zoran in its final years. However, eventually competition from chip competitors, especially from Taiwan, increased, resulting a reductions in average sellling prices, lower profit margins and loss of market share for Zoran near the end of its existence as an independent company.

Earlier on in its camera chip development, Zoran had acquired CMOS sensor technology which it sought to combine with its digital camera chips, but this effort was never successful and discontinued after a number of years.

HDTV chips

Zoran obtained its HDTV product line through its acquisition of Oak Technologies in 2003, which had not much earlier acquired HDTV chip pioneer TeraLogic. It was noted that Zoran paid a premium for this technology because it had earlier declined to enter into a bidding war with Oak for TeraLogic.

Zoran's DTV revenues only grew slowly and it did not compete in the stand-alone video-processor segment (which did not include MPEG-2 decoding functionality) that brought success Trident Microsystems and other companies in the early phase of LCD TV unit growth. Instead, Zoran concentrated on its ATSC technology, which includes MPEG-2-decoding, and obtained tuner and demodulator chip technology. Zoran introduced a complete integrated SoC solution integrating such functions as MPEG-2 decoding and video processing for US ATSC HDTVs in 2007 (SupraHD 770/780).

For some time Zoran also developed products targeting subsidized converter boxes that would facilitate the transition away from analog terrestrial television broadcast in the US and other countries in North America starting from 2009. However, it was reported that Zoran did not foresee the need provide analog passthrough functionality in its design, which made its chip solution unviable as analog passthrough became a standard feature of converter boxes after maneuvering by different interest groups. Subsequently, Zoran made few further public comments about its converter box chip products or the level of sales it achieved in that segment.

In 2008 and 2009, Zoran finally achieved sales success with its SoC chips for the US HDTV market and achieved significant market share, especially for the low-to-mid-end LCD TVs, and the segment was the largest revenue contributor for Zoran in several quarters. However, competition increased from companies such as Taiwan-based MStar Semiconductor and MediaTek and the internal semiconductor divisions of major LCD TV manufacturers such as Samsung, resulting in increased chip price competition and loss of market share for Zoran by 2010.

New section in development for MediaTek article

Product positioning, performance and adoption of chips for the mobile segment

Feature phone processors and first smartphone processors

MediaTek's first mobile phone chipsets targeted basic phones and feature phones for the Chinese market from about 2005. Within a few years, MediaTek dominated the Chinese supply chain for basic and feature phone chipsets with chips such as the MT6235. MediaTek provided extensive engineering assistance to customers that facilitated more rapid introduction of new phone models. These mobile phones reached production volumes in the hundreds of millions, both for the Chinese domestic market and for export other price-sensitive markets around the world.

By 2012, MediaTek had become more competitive with chip solutions for the growing smartphone market with products such as the single-core MT6575 (with HSPA support) and dual-core MT6577 (with HSPA+), manufactured using a 40 nm process. They feature ARM Cortex-A9 processor cores and a PowerVR SGX531 Ultra GPU. Although the chip platform provided adequate performance for use in lower-priced smartphones, the performance of its GPS location technology was criticized.

Introduction of Cortex-A7 CPU cores and 28 nm process (2013)

In 2013, the MT6589 series, MediaTek's first smartphone chip manufactured using 28 nm process technology, was widely adopted in cost-effective but well-performing smartphones from numerous manufacturers, primarily in China. Due largely to the use of a power-efficient quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 configuration, the chip delivers adequate performance with relatively low power consumption and resulting long battery life. The high power efficiency allows the use of smaller and cheaper batteries and increases design flexibility. The inclusion of a relatively large 1MB L2 cache and a reasonably fast PowerVR SGX544MP GPU contributes to its performance, allowing more demanding applications such as 2D and most 3D games to perform smoothly with acceptable power consumption. The external wireless radio interface chips also provided by MediaTek for this platform contribute to relatively fast and stable 2G/3G and WiFi performance and reception.

Not long after the MT6589, the dual core MT6572 was introduced, targeting the low-end smartphone market. The chip uses the same efficient ARM Cortex-A7 cores as used in the MT6589, but the reduction of the number of CPU cores from four to two, the use of a smaller 256 KB L2 cache, a cost-effective ARM Mali-400MP1 GPU, and integration of wireless connectivity components such as WiFi greatly reduces the production cost of the chip platform, allowing it to be used in very low-priced smartphones. Performance and battery efficiency are lower than that of the MT6589, but the chip meets the requirements for low-end smartphones and has been widely adopted worldwide.

Towards the end of 2013, MediaTek introduced the MT6582, quad-core smartphone chip with lower production cost than the previous MT6589. While retaining the quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 configuration, the L2 cache size was reduced to 512 KB, and the use of a ARM Mali-400MP2 instead of the PowerVR SGX544 results in somewhat lower GPU performance. As of 2014, the MT6582, including the lower-clocked MT6582M variant, had been very widely adopted in lower-priced smartphones.

The MT6589, MT6572 and MT6582 integrate a cellular 2G/3G baseband with support for EDGE, R8 HSPA+ and TD-SCDMA. The MT6572 and MT6582 additionally integrate more wireless connectivity functionality such as WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, reducing the cost and complexity of external chip components. In general, the wireless radio performance of MediaTek platforms starting from the MT6589 has been recognized as being a significant improvement over previous generations of MediaTek smartphone platforms in areas such as 2G/3G cellular reception and data, WiFi, and GPS.

Penetration of tablet market (2013/2014)

Starting in 2013, MediaTek has seen wider adoption of its chips for tablets. In 2013, some well-known manufacturers including Asus, Acer and Lenovo used MediaTek chips in popular tablet models such as the Asus MeMO Pad HD 7. As a smartphone chip company, MediaTek has a considerable advantage over competitors (such as Rockchip and Allwinner Technology) supplying chips to Chinese tablet manufacturers because it has mature cellular network baseband technology and related chipsets. MediaTek's WiFi chip expertise is also an advantage. Although WiFi-only tablets remain popular in Western markets, other markets such as China, other developing markets and Eastern Europe have seen increasing adoption of low-priced tablets with 2G/3G cellular data, and sometimes phone capability. MediaTek has seen market share gains because of its ability to supply cost-effective, competitive chip solutions especially for cellular (2G/3G) data-enabled tablets. Often, MediaTek can sell to tablet manufacturers chip solutions that are identical to, or slight variations of, chip platforms used in smartphones. At the same time, MediaTek has started feeling some pressure from Intel, which has subsidized Atom processor chip sales for tablets with its contra-revenue strategy to gain market share, affecting MediaTek's business with customers such as Asus.

Octa-core MT6592 (2014)

Towards in the end of 2013, MediaTek introduced the octa-core MT6592, incorporating eight power-efficient ARM Cortex-A7 cores in a symmetric configuration. It incorporates a 1 MB L2 cache and uses a ARM Mali-450MP4 GPU that offers significantly faster 3D performance than GPUs used in previous MediaTek chips, although 3D API support is limited to the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard, omitting support for OpenGL ES 3.x which is found in the latest generation of higher-performance GPU cores. The MT6592 was the first octa-core smartphone chip to be widely adopted, being used by a large number of Chinese manufacturers from the beginning of 2014 for the higher, mid-priced segment that had traditionally not been covered by MediaTek, and has been popular in Asian markets such as China.

It has been noted that the CPU and GPU performance of the MT6592 is mostly limited by its single-channel memory interface, which limits memory bandwidth to 5.3 GB/s, much lower than competing smartphone SoCs targeting the mid-to-high performance segment. Possibly as a consequence of this, power efficiency and battery life has been reported to be reduced in MT6592-based smartphones utilizing a 1920x1080 (1080p) display, which puts significantly higher demands on the memory subsystem than lower screen resolutions such as 1280x720 (720p) and below.

Support for 4G (2014)

While competitor Qualcomm started selling SoC chips with integrated 4G baseband in volume as early as 2013, MediaTek has been late to market with an integrated 4G smartphone SoC, and as of August 2014, single-chip MediaTek SoCs with integrated 4G modem have yet to appear in end products. To support 4G, MediaTek is using a new baseband DSP architecture. However, as of mid-2014, MediaTek has started selling in volume its MT6290 stand-alone modem processor with a baseband supporting 4G, which can be used in conjunction with existing SoCs such as the MT6582 and MT6592. Being a non-integrated solution that essentially leaves one 2G/3G baseband core unused, MediaTek faces higher manufacturing costs with this solution than would be the case for a SoC with integrated 4G baseband. However, the production cost of SoCs such as the MT6582 is already relatively low compared to chips from competitors, so the extra cost may not be a critical disadvantage at this point. Although the MT6595 chip with integrated 4G baseband, targeted at higher-end smartphones, was announced some time ago, it has yet to appear in end-products. The MT6595 contains significantly faster CPU cores, a high-performance GPU core, and an upgraded memory interface, which puts it in a higher cost segment and puts higher demands on power and heat control. However, MediaTek has also announced several additional chips with integrated 4G baseband, including the 64-bit MT6732 and MT6752 which are likely to be more cost-effective and suitable for lower-end segments, and the high-end MT6795, with a feature set similar to the MT6595 but with more cost-effective and power-efficient CPU.

Introduction of new CPU architectures: ARM big.LITTLE and 64-bit ARMv8

MediaTek announced products incorporating ARM's big.LITTLE CPU configuration in 2013. big.LITTLE involves combining a set of higher-performing CPU cores (such as Cortex-A15 or Cortex-A17), activated when more performance is required, with more power-efficient CPU cores (such as Cortex-A7) for general use. MediaTek has announced that it is using heterogeneous multi-processing, the most powerful and efficient use of big.LITTLE. However, as of August 2014 MediaTek chips with big.LITTLE, such as the 4G MT6595 smartphone SoC, have not yet reached end products. Although average power consumption can be low as long as the power-efficient Cortex-A7 cores are used most of the time, high-performance cores such as ARM Cortex-A15 and A17 involve substantially higher maximum power consumption than the Cortex-A7-only configurations found in previous generation MediaTek chips.

MediaTek has announced chips incorporating ARM's new 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set architecture, including the quad-core MT6732, octa-core MT6752 and high-end octa-core MT6795, with all scheduled to be introduced in the second half of 2014. All three chips utilize a symmetrical configuration of Cortex-A53 CPU cores. This core is a power-efficient implementation of ARM's new architecture, with similarities to the Cortex-A7 that MediaTek has used extensively. MediaTek has not yet anounced any chips with 64-bit CPU cores utilizing the heterogeneous multi-processing architecture that it previously announced in conjunction with 32-bit ARMv7 based SoCs such as the MT6595.

Chip technology challenges faced by MediaTek

New chip technologies and architectures, such as the use of ARM big.LITTLE and 64-bit ARMv8 CPU configurations, wider and faster memory subsystems (such as dual-channel), the use of next generation GPU cores such as ARM Mali-7xx and PowerVR 6200, and the migration to a new baseband DSP architecture to support 4G, all involve risks and challenges to product success in the market. These technologies have the potential to increase power consumption (especially maximum power consumption), increase chip manufacturing cost because of increased die size and the lower yield rates associated with new chip technologies, to increase customer device manufacturing cost because of increases in PCB complexity and heat control, as well as other potential consequences. Some of these issues can cause a completed chip product to be unviable in the market and fail to sell in any significant volume. To remain succesful, MediaTek must make sure that it is able to supply chip solutions for each market segment that it wants to target that are cost-effective and power-efficient enough for the requirements of the segment, have adequate performance in conjunction with modern mobile operating systems, and also support the standards (including wireless standards such as 4G) required by the market. At the same time, the production cost of these chip solutions must be low enough relative to their selling price, so that MediaTek can maintain the margins and profitability of its chip sales at the level similar to what it has been in recent times.

New section in development for MediaTek article

Financial performance

Yearly net sales and operating income in million NT$

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Net sales	52,942	74,779	68,016	77,311	71,988	53,842	99,263	136,056	213,063
Income from operations	23,816	31,427	17,090	21,447	17,267	4,840	12,403	25,244	TBD

MediaTek's financial results have been subject to variation as the financial success of different product lines fluctuated. MediaTek's relatively strong sales in 2009/2010 was based on its strong market position for feature phone chipsets. Smartphone and tablet solutions contributed to MediaTek's sales and income increase in 2013, while revenue recognition from the acquisition of MStar Semiconductor, which became effective in February 2014, as well as a continuing strong position for smartphone and tablet solutions, are the main reasons for the sales growth seen in 2014.

MediaTek's stock has been trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange the under the symbol TWSE: 2454. In its early days, the stock price peaked at NT$783 (the all-time high) in April 2002, and later saw a peak of NT$656 in March 2007. The lowest price in the period starting from 2001 was reached in January 2005, with a stock price of NT$171. In more recent times, the stock peaked at NT$590 in January 2010 and saw a low point in August 2011 at NT$221. The stock price saw its highest level since 2010 at NT$545 on July 3, 2014. The stock price then declined to a low near $NT400 in October 2014 before recovering to a price of NT$488 as of January 9, 2015.