Global smartphone AP shipments are expected to increase 5.1% on year in 2018, with Qualcomm to continue to serve as the top vendor, followed by MediaTek, according to Digitimes Research.

On the other hand, smartphone solutions developed by Apple, Samsung Electronics and HiSilicon Technologies together will account for over 30% of the global smartphone AP shipments in 2018, Digitimes Research estimates.

Qualcomm is expected to see its smartphone AP shipments decline 1.2% in 2018, as in-house developed APs by Apple and Huawei for their own-brand smartphones will continue to squeeze the third-party AP market.

MediaTek will manage to ramp up its AP shipments 3.6% in 2018, as its target markets overlap only slightly with those targeted by vendors which develop chips themselves, and its mainstream products will remain competitive.

Cortex-A53 will remain the mainstream architecture for smartphone AP in 2018. While 28nm will continue to be the primary process for the production of smartphone APs, the ratios of 7nm, 10nm and 12nm APs in flagship models will increase and the ratios of 14nm and 16nm products will drift downward. With regard to baseband technology, APs supporting 2G and 3G technologies will remain the niche market in 2018.

In line with the rising popularity of AI, sales of smartphone APs with integrated graphics processing unit (GPU), digital signal processor (DSP) or neural network to perform heterogeneous computing will gain momentum in 2018, Digitimes Research believes. The ratio of smartphone APs with heterogeneous computing capability for deep learning inference will account for 20.3% of total global AP shipments in the year.