China-based smartphone vendors including Huawei, Xiaomi and TCL have stepped up their pace of placing chip orders in the second quarter of 2016, according to industry sources.

The May 1 holiday season encouraged China-based smartphone vendors to build inventories. Meanwhile, the vendors are gearing up for the upcoming roll-outs of their new models, said the sources.

The outlook for end-market demand is also more optimistic, as China's local mobile operators have started to offer subsidies on smartphone purchases, the sources indicated.

Smartphone chip suppliers are expected to post revenue growth of 15-25% sequentially in the second quarter of 2016, the sources said.

MediaTek, which supplies its smartphone chips mainly to China-based smartphone companies, expects to post revenue growth of 24-32% sequentially in the second quarter of 2016.