Following the revelation of a MediaTek official that Samsung Electronics "is a customer," the mobile phone maker has officially been confirmed that it is using a new company to produce chips for its upcoming phones. News reports tell that MediaTek will be manufacturing these chips for Samsung's low to mid-range smartphones.
MediaTek confirmed during a tech conference Monday, Sept. 19 that Samsung is already a client. Some reports considered the chipmaker's announcement that the South Korean company might have already forged agreement with them.
According to a news report published on a Japan-based finance website, the revelation came out straight from Mediatek's Chairman Tsai Ming-kai. The report said that the chip honcho was requested to comment on the recent debacle Samsung is facing with regard to explosion of many Galaxy Note 7 units brought by battery packs.
Tsai responded that it was not possible for him to comment on this happening "as Samsung is a customer." He also revealed that his company has been putting extra efforts to score a deal with Apple.
In March 2013, it was already confirmed by another MediaTek official that its company was already brewing an agreement with Samsung to manufacture its CPUs for Tizen-based smartphones. MediaTek is considered the world's biggest mobile chip provider to Chinese smartphone manufacturers.
Samsung has been infamous for producing its own Exynos chips for most of its smartphones and tablets. Qualcomm is another chipmaker that produces the Snapdragon mobile processor and chip which Samsung has been using for a few years already to a ton of its smartphones and tablets.
Samsung is reportedly beginning to tap other chipmakers to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm and devote Exynos chips for its high-end devices.
Meanwhile, Samsung's move has been foreseen as a trigger to globally catapult MediaTek in the chipset department.
As of now, there are no clear details yet as to which line of Tizen-based devices will be powered by MediaTek's chips. Samsung phones powered by Tizen include the Z series like Z3, Z2, Z1 and Z.
