Ever since MediaTek announced the Dimensity 9000, we’ve felt it had a shot at challenging Qualcomm. It has the latest new Arm Cortex cores and promises incredibly fast performance. At the same time, MediaTek has never really broken into the North American market, making most of its sales in Europe, China, and India.
On Friday, MediaTek announced that five manufacturers will use its 2022 flagship chip: Honor, OPPO, Redmi, vivo, and Xiaomi.
Of those brands, the first to use the Dimensity 9000 will be the “next Find X flagship,” according to OPPO VP Henry Duan. That would presumably be the OPPO Find X4, though OPPO already announced during the Qualcomm summit that it would receive the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Most likely, it’ll use the Snapdragon in North America, as the Find X3 Pro did, while MediaTek takes the international market.
We don’t know which Xiaomi, Honor, or vivo phones will receive the Dimensity 9000 as of yet. We know the Xiaomi 12 will use the Snapdragon 8, but this flagship seems the most likely candidate to sport the 9000 as well, specifically in China and other territories.
Given the vivo x70 used the Dimensity 1200, the vivo x80 will likely get a huge Dimensity upgrade.
As for Redmi, we know it’ll use the Dimensity 9000 in the Redmi K50 series. MediaTek claims the Dimensity 9000 can support ray tracing and 144Hz refresh rates, which could make it a great fit for a Redmi gaming phone.
As expected, these five brands have all used MediaTek chips before, and make most of their sales in the same territories where MediaTek has traditionally found success. It didn’t make in-roads with new brands like OnePlus, Sony, or Motorola; but the best Android phone flagships in non-U.S. markets will rely on this new chipset.
This is the first year MediaTek has produced a flagship chip since the disastrous Helio X30 in 2017. If the Dimensity 9000 competes with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, other brands that haven’t traditionally worked with MediaTek could look into it seriously for 2023 phones in North America.
To do so, however, it’ll need to support mmWave 5G in future Dimensity designs. Right now, that makes expansion into this market a non-starter, since it shuts out eligibility for several major U.S. carriers.
MediaTek reportedly sold 50 million chipsets in 2020, followed by 150 million in 2021. Next year, the company’s sales success may only expand thanks to this new chipset.
