MediaTek has maintained its lead in the mobile application processor (AP) market until the second quarter of this year. Its sustained success can be attributed to a strategy of focusing on low-cost 5G phones and flooding the market with a plethora of chipsets. Smartphones, on the other hand, are no longer the only popular consumer electronics, with Chromebook sales continuing to rise. Expanding its portfolio to catch that lucrative market, MediaTek is doing what it does best by introducing a new 5G CPU to the Chromebook market to address additional tiers.
Because MediaTek’s Kompanio line is newer than the company’s Helio and Dimensity lines, there aren’t as many of them. The company’s top-of-the-line Kompanio 1300T, geared at luxury Android tablets, was only announced two months ago. This time, it’s returning to its roots by announcing a new system-on-chip (SoC) for Chrome OS laptops and tablets.
The MediaTek Kompanio 900T follows in the footsteps of the Kompanio 1200 and 1300T, but in a lower range. It has two high-performance Cortex-A78 cores and four efficient Cortex-A55 cores instead of eight. In comparison to a Mali-G68 M4, the GPU is likewise downgraded, albeit it is still capable of running a 2K 20001200 display at 120Hz. One major improvement is that it supports LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage, which aren’t available on higher-end CPUs.
Kompanio 900T is different from other mid-range chipsets in its approach towards 5G networks. It provides support for 5G networks but it is still sub-6GHz 5G so its customers will have to wait for another Kompanio chip with mmWave 5G support. However, 5G Chromebooks are rare. So if it can be released under an affordable price tag, it will be a nice catch.
MediaTek hopes to release the new Kompanio 900T on Chromebooks and tablets soon. A fixed timeline has not been mentioned. But the demand for Chromebooks is expected to go down soon. Therefore, if the new SoC is not released quickly, it might not be as successful as the other processors.
