NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, December 8, 2017

Mediatek, the world’s second largest mobile chip maker, has teamed up with U.S. tech group Google to offer cheaper, faster smartphones in emerging markets as early as next year amid sluggish demand from mainland China.

The Taiwanese company said on Thursday it had enabled several models of its mobile chips including MT6739, MT6737 and MT6580 to run Google’s streamlined operating system Android Oreo (Go edition) in entry-level smartphones.

The lighter version of Android software will allow programs to run 15% faster while occupying half of the storage and burning less data than the older version on devices with memory between 512MB and 1GB, said Sagar Kamar, director of product management of Google’s Android department.

Photo courtesy of Abd allah Foteih.