MediaTek eyes premium Android phone market with new 5G chip

FILE PHOTO: MediaTek chips are seen on a development board at the MediaTek booth during the 2015 Computex exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2015. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang

(Reuters) - Chip designer MediaTek Inc on Thursday released a new 5G smartphone chip that it hopes will be used in premium-priced Android smartphones, a market Qualcomm Inc currently dominates.

The Hsinchu, Taiwan-based company said its new Dimensity 9000 chip will be the world's first to use its manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's "N4" chipmaking process, which helps makes chips smaller and faster. MediaTek said it will also be the first smartphone chip to feature a powerful new computing core from Arm Ltd called the Cortex X2.