MediaTek will focus on further improving its market share, gross margin and overall earnings in 2018 through continued investments in new technologies, including AI, 5G, NB-IoT, 802.11ax and automotive electronics, according to company co-CEO Rick Tsai.

While MediaTek has seen its mobile platform business and gross margin improve significantly in recent months, Tsai said that the company will continue to deepen its cooperation with clients in 2018, optimizing an array of its technologies such as wire and wireless, mobile computing, imaging processing, multimedia and power management.

Sales of the company's IC solutions to a number of sectors, including smart voice assistant, IoT, power management (PWM) and ASIC, will continue to advance by a double-digit rate in the next 1-2 years after recording an over 20% growth in 2017, Tsai added.

In 2018, MediaTek will also ramp up the sales ratio of its integrated PWM and smartphone AP solutions, while also enhancing its deployments in customized solutions for AI, IoT, AIoT and other emerging applications, Tsai continued.

Although MediaTek is not included in the first batch of clients of the 7nm process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Tsai revealed that MediaTek is currently developing three next-generation application processors to be fabricated by 7nm process node. Tsai declined to outline the timetables for the planned 7nm chips.

With regard to mobile platform products for 2018, MediaTek plans to roll out two new CPUs for the existing Helio P family, including the Helio P40 in the first half of the year, according to company president Joe Chou.

The new Helio P-series processors will apply AI and high-speed computing technologies and fully support related functionality and applications such as facial recognition, AR/VR, and 3D sensing, Chou added.

MediaTek will also look to expand its cooperation with automobile brands and ODMs for the development of automotive electronics products as soon as its related solutions for in-car information systems and millimeter-wave radars have been verified, Chou revealed.