Taiwanese semiconductor company, MediaTek, may not have a huge market share in the U.S. for its high-performance, low-cost mobile chipsets, but followers of the global tech scene would appreciate exactly how big the company is in countries like China and India. Thanks to its mantra of ‘more the merrier’ when it comes to the number of CPU cores, MediaTek’s value-for-money SoCs have cut out a pretty large niche for themselves at the entry and mid-level segments of the mobile devices industry in many regions around the world, even as the company tries hard to gain traction in the American market. MediaTek may have also had problems in places like India because of disputes with other companies related to Intellectual Property, but that hasn’t been able to stop them from quickly becoming one of the leading names in the semiconductor industry.
Either way, with Google’s ‘Daydream’ all set to be translated into reality, MediaTek has announced that it has been collaborating with the search giant to develop SoC solutions to support the new VR platform from Google. The Taiwanese company has already been working closely with the American tech giant on a number of fronts, including Android TV, Google Cast, and Android Wear. The company’s SoC solutions also powered the first-generation Android One devices that were released in India a couple of years ago, so the two already have a long history of collaborations that have apparently proven beneficial and productive for both. So the collaboration for Daydream is basically just an extension of the close working relationship the two firms have shared over the past several years.
In recent times, MediaTek has been branching out, trying to offer solutions for the smart home and for IoT devices, in addition to smartphones and tablets. Its chipsets today power everything from smartphones to smart televisions and tablets to smart wearables. Earlier this year, the company also announced a number of new specialized SoCs that were aimed at specific sectors of the consumer electronics industry. The new chipsets include the MT5595 that can be found on Android TV-based smart televisions. The company also announced a “Connected audio SoC, MT8507”, which will incorporate support for Google Cast. Then there’s also a new SoC – MT2601 – to power smart wearables based on Android Wear.