Kuo Ming-chi: The far-reaching impact of cooperation with OpenAI on MediaTek's smartphone business

Long-term, Qualcomm has occupied about 60% of the high-end Android SoC market, and by sponsoring Formula 1 Mercedes and Ferrari teams, as well as advertising on Manchester United jerseys, it has turned Snapdragon into a synonym for high-end chips through high-profile marketing. This brand premium has given Qualcomm's mobile SoC brand bargaining power, which is about 30% to 40% higher than MediaTek's.

The brand momentum of ChatGPT is rewriting this pattern. According to Kantar BrandZ data, ChatGPT is the brand with the fastest growth in brand value in 2026, soaring by 285% year-on-year.

Based on ChatGPT's approximately 900 million weekly active users, combined with the amplification effect of media reports and social media, the potential reach of the OpenAI smartphone launch event can reach 300 million to 500 million people, which is comparable to the audience scale of a top global sports event.

For MediaTek, this is an extremely rare opportunity for brand exposure in recent decades.

The more crucial market is the United States. About 80% of Americans have heard of ChatGPT, and it is the only AI chatbot that more than half of American teenagers have used (Pew Research Center). The United States is the most important high-end smartphone market globally, and MediaTek only debuted a smartphone equipped with its flagship SoC in the U.S. market for the first time in 2024. The cooperation with OpenAI will significantly accelerate MediaTek's brand recognition among U.S. consumers.

AI Agent redefines SoC design logic

Ming-Chi Kuo pointed out that the requirements for AI Agents are fundamentally different from traditional workloads.

Agent workloads are continuously running, with multi-round inference, tool calls, and memory updates constantly expanding the context status, and KV cache puts continuous pressure on the bandwidth, throughput, and power consumption of LPDDR. This "always-on, low-latency" work characteristic makes power management, memory efficiency, and heterogeneous computing scheduling optimization under continuous inference a core design subject.

At the same time, AI Agent phones emphasize continuous environmental awareness capabilities. ISP design is shifting from "high load at the moment of pressing the shutter" to "continuous low-power operation while balancing real-time perception and high-quality processing" — this is the second key optimization direction.

The problem is that there is no truly mature AI Agent device experience in the market at present, and all chip manufacturers can only design based on assumptions and simulations. Once MediaTek accumulates real Agent workload data through the OpenAI phone project, it can use actual use scenarios to guide the next generation of SoC design, rather than staying on paper talk.

From 5G to 6G: Using real-world data to gain a say in standard-setting

6G is widely seen as a network native to AI: in addition to higher bandwidths, it also needs to natively support the connection requirements of a large number of AI Agent devices, persistent connections, ultra-low latency, and end-cloud collaborative inference. This means that whoever grasps the real network behavior data of AI Agents will gain more say in the formulation of 6G standards.

MediaTek has a precedent in the 5G era. The company proposed a relevant proposal earlier than Qualcomm in the IoT-NTN direction by about two years, completed the world's first IoT-NTN connection test in 2020, and in 2021, it used this to promote 3GPP to accelerate the standardization of IoT-NTN, which is a classic case of "exchanging empirical data for standard-setting rights."

Based on the Agent workload data accumulated in the OpenAI phone project, MediaTek is expected to propose specific proposals to 3GPP in the future, such as Agent-aware Modem wake-up mechanisms, memory bandwidth sharing specifications between Modem and NPU, and exclusive QoS levels for AI Agents. If the 6G standard eventually evolves in the direction familiar to MediaTek, the company will have a first-mover advantage in the mass production phase of 6G SoCs.

Revaluation: P/E discount for mobile business is expected to narrow

The recent strength in MediaTek's stock price is mainly driven by Google TPU orders and the increased visibility of AI ASIC business revenue for 2027-2028. The OpenAI mobile phone orders may not necessarily constitute a stock price catalyst in the short term, but their long-term valuation significance should not be overlooked.

First layer: Building downward support for stock prices. Against the backdrop of the AI Agent and AI device trends that have been