New Mediatek chip may bring Android handset prices to $100 level within a year
By Staska on 24 May 10According to Chinese business daily Commercial Times, Taiwanese chip maker Mediatek, has finished the development of a 3G system on chip for Android devices.
Mediatek already started shipping samples of the chip to customers, and expects to start volume production in Q4, this year.
The new dedicated Mediatek chip, with an integrated 3G baseband and application processor, may allow for the production of Android handsets in $100 price range.
First devices, mainly for the Chinese market, may reach the users late this year or in the first half of 2011. It will probably take a bit more time to get $100 Android handsets here in Europe, or in U.S.
But the recent launch of HTC Wildfire, and upcoming Android running Samsung Corby sibling shows, that Google’s mobile OS is already breaking out from the high end smartphone battleground, and starts to encroach on mid-to-low end smartphone category, that Nokia has been claiming for themselves these past few months.
Upcoming Mediatek chip based Android devices should make the low end smartphone wars so much more interesting.
Via Commercial Times
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