Value of phones shipped with Huawei’s Kirin chips soared almost 25,000% during Q4،
MediaTek was the top chipmaker in Q4 2023, as 117 million smartphones shipped with its silicon between October and December. That's a 21% year-over-year increase for the chipmaker whose flagship chip, the Dimensity 9300 application processor (AP), had a unique configuration. The Octa-core SoC features four Cortex-X4 Prime processor cores and four Cortex-A720 Performance processor cores. There are no low-power processor cores inside the Dimensity 9300 AP.
Apple was very far from MediaTek. The company shipped 78 million
iPhone units during the fourth quarter of 2023, with each phone powered by one of the tech giant's A-series chipsets. The newest component is the 3nm A17
Pro which powers the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Year over year, Apple's chip shipments for the quarter increased 7%. Global data
comes from Canalys.
Based on the number of smartphones shipped in the fourth quarter, MediaTek was the world's leading chipset vendor.
Just behind Apple, Qualcomm, third, delivered 69 million smartphones equipped with one of its Snapdragon processors in the fourth quarter of 2023. This represents a gain of 1% on an annual basis. Next is UNISOC, a fabless smartphone chip designer in Shanghai formerly known as Speadtrum. During the fourth quarter, 27 million smartphones equipped with UNISOC chipsets were shipped, an increase of 24% year-on-year.
Top smartphone chip suppliers by legacy phone units (top) and phone revenue (bottom)
Despite performing better than previous Exynos APs, the Exynos 2400 SoC failed to push
Samsung forward in the fourth quarter, with the company seeing 48% fewer phones powered by an Exynos chipset shipped over the three month. This is because there were no Exynos 2300 and phones powered by the Exynos 2400 AP, like the Galaxy
S24 and
Galaxy S24+ in most markets (outside the US and China) they only shipped in the first quarter of 2024.
Huawei's HiSilicon unit benefited from Chinese foundry SMIC's production of the 7nm Kirin 9000 for the Huawei Mate 60 series. This was the first 5G SoC manufactured for Huawei since US export rules revised in 2020 blocked Huawei from obtaining 5G chips from foundries using American technology. As a result, HiSilicon chips were integrated into 7 million smartphones during the fourth quarter of last year, an astonishing 5,121% year-on-year increase.
During the fourth quarter of 2023,
Google shipped three million Pixel handsets powered by a Tensor chip. Interestingly, this represents a 4% drop from the number of Pixel phones shipping with a Tensor chipset during Q4 2022.
Based on revenue from phones shipped globally, Apple was the top chip supplier in the fourth quarter.
What would this list look like if we looked at the amount of revenue generated by phones powered by the chipsets made by these chip designers? First of all, given that many of MediaTek's chips are found in low-cost Android phones, you wouldn't expect the company to stay on top. And indeed, that is not the case. Apple's expensive iPhone models put the company at the top of the list, as $87 billion in revenue was generated from handsets using Apple's A-series hotspots shipped during the fourth quarter . This represents a gain of 20% over one year.
Phones with Qualcomm processors brought in $30 billion in the fourth quarter, good enough for second place despite a 2% decline. MediaTek saw a healthy 22% increase in revenue from phones using its chipsets during the fourth quarter, reaching $23 billion. Huawei's HiSilicon was next and with an incredible 24,471% year-over-year increase, revenue from phones shipping with HiSilicon chipsets stood at $7 billion during the fourth quarter.
Fourth-quarter revenue for phones powered by Samsung's Exynos chipsets fell 44% to $5 billion. Next, phones running on UNISOC silicon generated $3 billion in revenue for the final quarter of 2023, up 24% from the fourth quarter of 2022. And that brings us to Google. Revenue from Pixel handsets shipping with a Google Tensor hotspot reached $2 billion in the quarter, up 22%.
