MediaTek & Nvidia – Rumblings from Computex

Rumour is much worse than reality.

• Aside from Nvidia opening up the data centre CPU market, MediaTek was expected to enter the PC CPU market, but with nothing more than a vague hint from Rick Tsai, tongues were set wagging, mostly wrongly in my view.
• The PC market is ripe for disruption as the x86 instruction set increasingly looks obsolete, and the market leader, Intel, is on its knees.
• Qualcomm has already jumped on this market and, by all accounts, is making fairly good headway, claiming 10% market share in laptops with a price point of over $800.
• Furthermore, this is a high-volume market with around 250m units sold every year and where the CPU commands a high price point, making it a market worth chasing.
• Qualcomm is currently the only chip vendor for Windows and Arm, and given the market’s promise, this is a market that is a perfect fit for MediaTek.
• Furthermore, its partnership with Nvidia should allow it to eke out a competitive edge against Qualcomm by offering an SoC with Nvidia graphics on board.
• This would greatly help MediaTek differentiate itself relative to Qualcomm in the part of the market where graphics performance is important.
• However, at Computex 2025, there was no N1 chip (laptops) no N1X chip (desktops), nothing from Nvidia and nothing from MediaTek on a standalone basis without Nvidia on board.
• All three of these product categories are supposed to be in development and were widely expected to launch at Computex 2025.
• The chatter started immediately and took 2 distinctive tracks:

• • First, the market doesn’t want MediaTek: which makes no sense whatsoever.
  • There were some reports doing the rounds that Microsoft and the OEMs have no interest in supporting MediaTek PC chips.
  • This is nonsensical because more competition will lead to lower prices, cheaper computers and higher volume shipments as a result.
  • This would lead to higher revenues and profits for both Microsoft and the OEMs, meaning that logically, they should be welcoming MediaTek with open arms and there are conflicting reports of this.
  • I suspect that there is a serious case of Chinese whispers going on here and that the real issue that has led to this erroneous view comes down to development.
  • Second, development is harder than expected: which I think is the most rational answer to the question of why a chip has not been launched.
  • There are reports that the early benchmark tests for the N1 and N1X have not been good enough to spin the prototypes into production chips, which explains why there is a delay.
  • There are also reports that other technical difficulties and problems have been greater than expected, which is why there has been no product forthcoming.
  • This could be where the rumours are coming from with Microsoft and the OEMs saying “come back when you have fixed the problems”.
  • This implies that it could be 2026 before a chip is launched and late 2026 before there are products on the shelves for consumers to buy.
  • The only hint we got was a vague reference from Rick Tsai during his keynote that a 2nm product was forthcoming, but he did not say whether it would be a PC CPU or something else.
• I think that the net result is that these chips are harder to make than they would appear and that both Nvidia and MediaTek are taking longer than expected to get them to the right level of performance per watt.
• This is all good news for Qualcomm, which is once again demonstrating that when it comes to getting a working product to market, it remains the competitor to beat.
• The pressure will be exacerbated further as Qualcomm is not standing still, as the X Elite 2 is almost certain to be launched at Snapdragon Summit at the end of September.
• The rumour machine is talking about another big step change improvement in performance per watt for X Elite 2, but I suspect that something more like 20% to 30% is likely.
• I base this on the kind of improvements that Apple is now seeing as it goes from one silicon generation to another.
• Either way, it will further increase the bar for MediaTek and Nvidia for their product, and it looks to me like this market may evolve in a similar manner to the smartphone market.
• Here, Qualcomm gets to market first and takes most of the high-end while MediaTek quickly follows with something similar and occupies the mid to low end of the market.
• I would not be surprised to see AMD launch a Windows on Arm variant if it increasingly becomes apparent that x86 will go the way of the Dodo.
• Even with healthy competition from MediaTek and AMD, this still represents a great opportunity as Intel’s market share is currently up for grabs, meaning that the outlook for Qualcomm and MediaTek remains very good in this space.
• I continue to hold a position in Qualcomm and see no reason to sell it as this is an indication that its edge in PCs is larger than I thought.