Taipei, Nov. 9, 2012 (CENS)--MediaTek Inc. recently announced consolidated revenue of NT$10.4 billion (US$362 million) for Oct., beating market expectations despite slipping 4.6% from September.

Industry executives predict the company's revenue for this quarter to be flat or increase 5%.

The company, a wireless chip vendor in Taiwan with the largest share of Chinese market, ascribed the month-over-month decline mostly to China's weeklong October 1 National Day holidays, which reduced work days last month.

In spite of the decline, the company's revenue for last month still rose 39.38% YoY, with October revenue pushing revenue for the first 10 months to NT$83 billion (US$2.8 billion), surging 15.7% YoY.

The company is optimistic about sales for this quarter expecting shipment of smartphone chips to rise to over 40 million sets and gross margin to roughly stay on par with last quarter's level. The company has hiked shipment goal for this year to 110 million smartphone chips. 

While seeing MedaTek strong shipments of baseband processors for 3G smartphones, market research organization Strategy Analytics says MediaTek was the world's No.2 vendor of baseband processors in the first half with market share of 12.8%.

Last quarter alone, MediaTek shipped more-than-expected 3G baseband processors of 35-40 million sets, predicting shipments to top 40 million sets this quarter, roughly on par with or up 10% from the Q3 level.

The company targets revenue for this quarter at NT$28.9-30.9 billion (US$996 million-US$1.06 billion), 2% lower or 5% higher than its Q3 result.

Industry executives put the revenue number at NT$30.3 billion (US$1.04 billion) or so, rising around 3% quarter over quarter, in anticipation that unit price slump would offset the effect of an estimated 10% increase in the company's shipments for this quarter.

(by Ken Liu)