The aggressive push by MediaTek, Taiwan’s largest smartphone chip designer, to enter the global long-term evolution (LTE) market in competition with leader Qualcomm of the U.S. is not likely to show significant results until 2016, according to Randy Abrams, Taiwan head of equities research for Credit Suisse.

“MediaTek’s ramp in developed markets may take until next year to have some traction as some of its China-based customers will start from China on LTE, and are still focusing exports on 3G with emerging markets still ramping up from feature phones to smartphones,” Abrams said in comments to EE Times. “The company indicated that it is still working on U.S. carriers for certification later in the year,” he said.

The baseband chip business has been a snake pit for companies such as Broadcom, STMicroelectronics and Renesas, which have exited the competition due to the need for qualification by global smartphone vendors, as well as cellular network operators.

MediaTek's push into LTE will face additional challenges as Qualcomm will work to maintain its competitive edge, according to Abrams.

“We still view it a very competitive space between MediaTek and Qualcomm as the latter also has put efforts on bringing more advanced technology to its lower-mid tier part of the product stack,” Abrams said. “Mediatek’s new chipset family coming out in the second quarter of 2015 still looks more competitive for the features needed in China smartphones and could allow the company to rise from the 20 percent 4G share of the China built smartphones it had last year,” he added.

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