New York — The move manifests that Microsoft and Google remain very interested in China has just surfaced. Both companies have reportedly struck deals with “MediaTek,” a Taiwanese semiconductor company that specializes in wireless communications, to strengthen their grip in the smartphones segment aimed at China and other emerging markets.
Emerging markets have immense capabilities in terms of Smartphone market share and others. The tech titans are eying these latent potential and thus are coupling with associates in order to grab a pie.
“MediaTek has already developed a chipset and other hardware for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 operating system and has sent the package to handset makers in China so they can begin designing new Windows Mobile smartphones, a MediaTek representative said.” Also, “MediaTek will release a similar hardware and software package with Google’s Android mobile phone OS in the second half of this year”.
According to the reports there is huge demand for Smartphones and rich communication devices in emerging markets. To fulfill these requirements, companies are prompted towards offering mobiles at affordable prices.
“There is a huge thirst for smartphones in emerging markets,” Microsoft said in a statement. “For many people, the phone rather than the PC is the main entry point to the Internet, resulting in a high demand for rich communication devices. In order to meet this demand, we have teamed up with MediaTek to facilitate the provision of affordable smartphones,” the company added.
The alliance will give Microsoft and Google an opportunity to access to hundreds of small-scale mobile phone makers in China that sell inexpensive smartphones at home as well as abroad in India and other emerging markets, said Flora Wu, analyst at research firm BDA (China) Limited. MediaTek conducts its business with these Chinese handset makers for years, providing the chips and other hardware, while the handset makers focus on the external design of the phones and handset sales. Partnering with MediaTek keeps R&D costs low for the phone makers in their struggle against bigger, established companies such as Nokia and Samsung Electronics.
Microsoft’s approach may not bring as much of a surprise. Rather it is Google’s involvement with MediaTek that is a little unanticipated. During the past month, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates have both made statements to the point that they were not troubled by recent hacking claims involving China.
Microsoft’s accord with MediaTek was actually reported by a press release, too. Google more or less threatened to pull out of China, after all, and while it is normally much more communicative than Microsoft, the company has not yet put together any press releases or blog posts about this.
Google did not return calls requesting comment.
Microsoft in particular has lost market share in the smartphone wars, mainly to Apple’s iPhone and to BlackBerry phones from Research In Motion (RIM). China’s mobile market no doubt represents an opportunity for all three of these organizations to make a lot of money, in any event.