Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014

Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsung LSI. The report mentions that HiSilicon, Intel and MediaTek had bigger growth than Qualcomm in 2014.

Qualcomm's strength based on Snapdragon 800 series wins in higher-tier phones

According to the report, Qualcomm's leadership was largely based on design wins for its Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 805 SoCs in the higher-tier market. Examples of this include the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3. However, as I have previously reported Samsung has increased its use of in-house application processors starting from the second half of 2014, culminating in the exclusive use of Exynos 7420 in the Galaxy S6 in 2015, putting pressure on Qualcomm.

Baseband share in 2014

Strategy Analytics has also published a report with details about baseband (modem) market share in smartphones. According to the report, LTE (4G) basebands accounted for 50% of cellular baseband share in 2014, and the figure is likely to increase significantly in 2015. Qualcomm led in LTE basebands, but HiSilicon, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek and Samsung also increased LTE baseband shipments.

In terms of revenues in the overall baseband market, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Speadtrum, Marvell and Intel had the top positions in 2104. Qualcomm had 66% revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 17% and Speadtrum with 5% sare. Given the product lines of the respective companies in 2014, Qualcomm's revenues are based on both integrated SoC and separate modems, while Intel's sales were mostly separate modem chips, while the other players mostly shipped a mix of integrated SoCs and modem chips.

Comparison with 2013

Comparing with the reports that Strategy Analytics issued for 2013, Qualcomm saws it baseband revenue share remain relatively stable at 66% compared to 64% in 2013. MediaTek saw its AP market share increase from 10% in 2013 to 14% in 2014, and its baseband share increased.

Tablet processor market in 2014

According to another report issued by Strategy Analytics, the market for tablet processors grew 18% in 2014 to $4.2 billion. The top-five revenue share positions were occupied by Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung LSI. Apple led with 27% share (which must be an estimate), followed by Intel with 17% and Qualcomm with 16% share.

Notable is the absence among the top five of traditional leaders in the Chinese white-box market such as Rockchip and Allwinner. This most likely reflects in increase in brand name tablet shipments at the expense of the white-box tablet market, the low selling prices of white-box tablet processor and the encroachment of MediaTek and Intel into that segment.

Source: Strategy Analytics (Smartphone AP market share), Strategy Analytics (cellular baseband market share), Strategy Analytics (Tablet processor market share)