66 billion provided to 70 by orders of chips for laptops

Chinese farmers snapped portable Thunder to 245 Yuan (24 euro). Equipped with 8 speakers, this mobile phone is still on the field not to be damaged but emits a chime so powerful that farmers do not miss a call. In the small stores in the Chinese cities of province, traders, them, opted for the laptop equipped with a small ultraviolet lamp for detecting counterfeit notes. In the centre of Chongqing, are the fake iPhone to 600 Yuan (60 euros) and the "Sumsung" and other "Nckia", accepting two SIM cards, which record a sales explosion.

If entering all in powerful fashion of "shanzhai" - literally "the bandits of the mountain" - which grows the youth of the country to consume often "inspired" cheap products of major brands but always with innovative components, these new mobile phones are now, nearly a third of the total sales of portable recorded in China. And 90 of them are equipped with chip designed by the same company, the Taiwanese MediaTek whose name remains largely unknown to the public good it became, in terms of income, the second largest global circuits for laptops, provider behind Qualcomm.

If it is itself not combined and controls any factory, the group, which started in 1997 by designing CPUs for DVD and CD-ROM drives, offers Chinese companies baited by the explosion of the local market of the mobile phone of the sophisticated chip, integrating all the functions and applications required for the functioning of their apparatus. Now with more that assemble on the chip, a shell, a small video camera and a battery, thousands of companies have emerged, in recent months in the country to offer low-cost their own devices, especially in the poorest provinces where the purchase of one of the last cry of Apple, Nokia or LG would require investment of several months of salary. This year, over 3,000 models of different phones have thus been on a Chinese market still very fragmented.

Bet on emerging markets

Surfing, in the words of its CEO, Tsai Ming-Kai, on this phenomenon "of destructive innovation", MediaTek, in recorded annual landslide, increased its sales by 24 over the first nine months of the year to reach a total of $ 2.66 billion provided to 70 by orders of chips for laptops. Over the same period, its net income jumped by 71 to $ 860 million. Faced with a start of saturation of the Chinese market and the thrust of the competition of designers Chinese, such as the shanghaien Spreadtrum, MediaTek said now bet on the explosion in demand in other emerging markets such as the India, the Middle East or South America, where Chinese manufacturers already exporting tens of millions of devices "shanzhai". "Emerging markets continue to grow and will always be an engine of growth for us in 2010," explains Mingto Yu, Chief Financial Officer of the group, on the sale of 350 million chips for laptops in 2009 and more 400 million next year.

To escape competition from Chinese designers, the Group also has boarding a range including multiplying the third generation processors. After having settled a long conflict of intellectual property patent WCDMA with Qualcomm, the Taiwanese announced they were its first 3 G chips to Chinese customers in the first months of 2010.