#5G chipset

At the height of war, there were Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets, engaged in heated battle against Apple’s A-series mobile chips. Since telecom wasn’t globally standardized at the time and China had its own 3G networks that global manufacturers found difficult to support, the company sought to develop a chipset that solved these issues. Spreadtrum continued supplying chipsets to entry-level and midrange devices globally. To put things into perspective, it neared the performance of the famed Snapdragon 700-series chipsets, rather than compete against its price-like 600s. The brand followed it up by releasing multiple iterations of the Tiger chipset at various price points (nothing above mid-range, of course.) This saw massive adoption, not only by big smartphone manufacturers, but the “Shopee-special” tablet brands from China that could now compete without much compromise. In 2020, UNISOC released its first 5G chipset. The following UNISOC T612 and T616 chipsets dominated the market in 2023/24 by being the primary chip of choice in entry to mid-level Transsion devices, as well as budget choices from realme/Nokia (HMD). From a small team in Shanghai trying to solve a 3G connection issue, a struggling company building “trash bin” chipsets, to now a global giant powering around 14% of the world’s pockets with 6nm AI processors…. Read more in our articles including "Rise of the Dragon: The UNISOC Story" and "BIR opens Tax Payer Portal".