MediaTek invests in India R&D across smartphones, TVs, autos, IoT

MediaTek India Managing Director Anku Jain has called the Indian government's emphasis on local manufacturing with a fiscal push a "big success," but also stressed the need for more focus on research and development (R&D).  Jain stated that India has improved in value addition in manufacturing smartphones, but is still far from global standards.

"Taiwan has 70% value addition; India is still at 20–25%. It's increasing, but very slowly," said Jain, adding that the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme of the government had encouraged indigenous manufacturing and fuelled growth in MediaTek India.

India's 'Make in India' mobile exports increased by 6% year-on-year during 2024, with Samsung and Apple commanding 94% of the shipments, as per Counterpoint. Tata Electronics recorded a 107% increase in production volume driven by iPhone manufacturing and a foray into chip making, while Foxconn's output increased by 19% year-on-year. Value addition in mobile manufacturing, however, remains at approximately 28%, according to industry estimates.

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MediaTek, a fabless semiconductor company from Taiwan, has been in India since 2004 and has R&D facilities in Bengaluru and Noida with more than 1,000 engineers. The company, as of April 2025, dominated the smartphone chipset market in India with a market share of 45%, ahead of Qualcomm with 32%.

MediaTek also recently introduced the mid-tier 5G chip Dimensity 8450, and Jain showcased healthy growth in its high-end Dimensity 9000 series that generated $2 billion in revenue for 2024. Jain highlighted MediaTek's focus on providing a complete chipset portfolio to enable OEM partners and drive smartphone availability across price bands.