A reconciliation table for our T-IFRS and a non-T-IFRS financial measure is attached in our press release for your information. That concludes my comments. Thank you.
Thank you, David. Now, I would like to turn the call to CEO, Dr. Rick Tsai, for prepared remarks.
Good afternoon, everyone. MediaTek delivered solid first quarter. Revenue exceeded the high end of our guidance, mainly driven by better than expected restocking demand from smartphone, broadband, and TV customers. Gross margin exceeded guidance due to a one-time item, excluding which gross margin was 47.9%, above the midpoint of our guidance range. In the last earnings call, we estimated overall consumer demand to improve moderately in 2024. Our view remains unchanged today. Given better visibility than in the third, in the last quarter, we now target our full year revenue in U.S. dollars term to grow by mid-teen % in 2024. As for full year gross margin, excluding the first quarter one-time item, our target remains to be 47% ± 1 percentage point. While all revenue groups are expected to grow year-over-year.
Smartphone growth is expected to be stronger compared to other revenue groups. Specific ally for smartphone, global shipment in 2024 is expected to increase by low single-digit % to 1.2 billion units. Our addressable market in dollar terms can grow higher at low-teens %, driven by continuous 4G to 5G migration and product mix shifting towards higher-end phones. Therefore, for MediaTek, coupled with our strong market share gain and higher blended ASP in the flagship segment, we are confident that we can grow our smartphone revenue by higher than mid-teens % in 2024. Flagship revenue is expected to grow more than 50%. For the mid- to long-term, AI represents great business opportunities for MediaTek, both in the cloud and at the edge.
In the cloud, with the proliferation of AI applications, we see increasing AI accelerator demand from cloud service providers to further strengthen their AI computing. MediaTek's strength in computing technology, coupled with the leading 112 G and 224 G SerDes IPs, are crucial for winning AI accelerator businesses. In addition, we're equipped with strong capabilities in complex IC integration, advanced process node, and advanced packaging, as well as a flexible ASIC business model to grasp future opportunities. At the end, at the edge, in addition to our leading APU solutions, MediaTek's NeuroPilot platform provides comprehensive software tools supporting all the popular AI models. These include Meta's latest Llama 3, Google's Gemini Nano, Stable Diffusion models, and all Mainland China's popular generative AI models. MediaTek's NeuroPilot is well received by the developer community and creates a strong ecosystem to accelerate edge AI development.
With that, now let me talk about the recent business performance of our three revenue groups. Mobile phone accounted for 61% of total revenue in the first quarter, growing 84% year- over- year and declining 2% sequentially. As I stated earlier, our mobile phone business will benefit from a better product mix this year, and we're excited about the opportunities generative AI will bring us. Smartphones are viewed as the most imminent generative AI edge device for content creation and personal assistant-related features. Our powerful Dimensity SoCs, together with our growing generative AI ecosystem, including our NeuroPilot platform, are ideally suited to empower smartphones with richer AI functions. Today, global top three smartphones ranked by AI performance are all powered by Dimensity 9300.... There will be more Dimensity 9300 and 8300 smartphones coming to the market in the second quarter.
Our next generation flagship SoC, Dimensity 9400, is on track to launch in the second half of this year and has received a very positive feedback from customers. Now let me move on to Smart Edge Platforms. This group grew 16% sequentially in the first quarter and accounted for 34% of total revenue, mainly driven by restocking demand from broadband and TV customers, as well as product mix enhancement in tablet. We continue to see upgrade demand for connectivity and computing driving growth this year. For connectivity in the first quarter, our wireless and wired solutions benefited from operators' adoption of the latest technology, such as Wi-Fi 7 and 10G-PON. In particular, our leading Wi-Fi 7 solutions are tracking ahead of our prior expectations and ramping robustly across broadband, routers, and notebooks.
For computing, tablets powered by Dimensity 9300, which supports generative AI, began mass production in the first quarter, and we expect more adoptions to come. For automotive, our Dimensity Auto Cockpit solutions continue to secure new design wins with leading car makers for future revenues. We're also working with NVIDIA to bring powerful generative AI capabilities to vehicles across premium and entry-level segments with our Dimensity Auto Cockpit chipsets. Now moving on to Power IC, which accounted for 5% of total revenue in the first quarter and declined 13% sequentially, mainly due to seasonality and product transitions. For the second quarter, we expect revenue to grow strongly year-over-year. On a sequential basis, revenue is expected to range between flat and 9% decline as smartphone shipments reaches a normal pattern in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, TV and computing devices are expected to continue to grow sequentially, and Power IC demand to recover across applications in the second quarter. With that, we expect our second quarter revenue to be in the range of TWD 121.4 billion-TWD 133.5 billion, flat to decline 9% sequentially and up 19%-30% year-over-year, at forecasted exchange rate of 32 NT dollars to one U.S. dollar. Gross margin is forecasted at 47% ±1.5 percentage points, in line with the gross margin in the previous quarters. Quarterly operating expenses ratio to be at 30% ±2 percentage points. With the first quarter results and the second quarter guidance, we are confident of achieving our annual revenue growth and gross margin targets.
Our view for the mid to long-term growth outlook remains intact. AI is driving huge business opportunities, both in the cloud and the edge for MediaTek. Our key design wins and new project executions are progressing well to contribute revenues from the second half of 2025. We believe 2024 will be the beginning of our next growth stage. Thank you.
Thank you, Rick. Rick, we are now waiting for Q&A. May we please have the first question?
Yes, of course. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in Q&A session. If you would like to ask questions, please press star one on your telephone keypad, and please ask your questions after your name is announced. Please limit your questions to two at a time to allow more participants to join the discussion. After two questions, we will move to the next caller. Should you have more questions, please press star one again to come back to the queue. And to cancel your questions, just simply press star two. As a reminder, it is greatly appreciated that you turn off the speakerphone mode of your device to prevent possible echo effect. We thank you for your cooperation. Now, please press star one if you would like to ask questions. Thank you. The first one to ask question, please, Laura Chen from Citigroup. Go ahead, please.
... Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question, and appreciate Rick a very comprehensive description about MediaTek's outlook. I'm just curious about that, when we move to the AI arena, like for the AI smartphone or Edge AI, aside from the large size of the chip for neural engine, what's MediaTek's observation of the technology upgrade at the hardware architecture, such as, like, thermal design, memory, et cetera? And also, what MediaTek is currently doing for better power q or heat dismission et cetera. And, for instance, like, do you think that current PoP type packaging need to be upgraded? Or anything you are doing, can you share with us? That's my first question. Thank you.
Well, Laura, your question maybe can be divided into two area, one for cloud and the other for the Edge. For the cloud, it is obvious that the key, I think some of the key technology areas include, of course, the leading edge process node. Today, a 3-nanometer, soon into 2 nanometers. Advanced packaging technologies, the 2.5D, maybe 3D, provided by mainly our foundry, key foundry suppliers. Memory, the high-bandwidth memory, certainly is now getting to be critical component and sometimes maybe a bottleneck component for the data center AI deployment, which is moving from, I think, HBM3, HBM3E, and very fast into HBM4.
And lastly, for the major interconnect, high-speed interconnect IPs, such as the SerDes, high-speed SerDes, up to 224G, is also key, because the interconnect, with all the computing that you need to put, you need to connect every socket or, no, every server, every rack. The interconnect technology IP is becoming another bottleneck. So, with all these, and if we look at MediaTek's capabilities, and we are, and we are suited to move into the AI accelerator, but mainly in the compute part, in the compute part. We are now really also targeting and focusing in that area.
For the Edge devices, I think, as we stated in our opening remarks, that our Dimensity 9300, and I also, I am very confident about our 9400 to be a leading SoC solution for the Edge generative AI applications. We are, I think our AI capability within our SoC, it's at least, I think it's as good as any. And we, again, we believe this will continue to drive our smartphone business. Together, also into some other computing devices and automotive applications. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Rick. I'm just following that, for the Edge side, other than the neural engine becoming bigger and more advanced now, do you also see that on the packaging side, there is a major change looking forward for the Edge device?
Not particularly. I think we are, we are moving. No. I mean, I think, depending on your definition of edge, for the smartphone, I think, not too much different. But as we also move into automotive applications, in the cockpit, and later on, likely into the ADAS applications, the packaging technology will move into more advanced, sophisticated one. But more, more advanced than smartphone, but less compared to the data center AI processors. Thank you.
Thank you. A follow-up question I may have on the gross margin impact, because we know where gross margins have been quite stable, and with those new technology and probably the rising cost of the foundry and also moving to more advanced packaging potentially as well. So how should we look at our profitability in the longer term? Is that the 47% or 48% gross margin may see further upside if we move to more advanced technology?
... Well, I mean, as we again stated earlier on, we are confident that we can achieve 47%, ±, going forward. We remain convinced of that. We understand your question. I think the key here is whether we can make products with more higher value, more and higher technology content. I think that there will be some cost impact from advanced the leading edge process node and, say, 2.5D packaging. But we are also making products using those technologies with much higher content, technology content, and value. So if you look at the gross margin and our operating margin, I'm quite comfortable that we will maintain, manage our margins well, hopefully better going forward. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. I'll back to the queue.
Next one to ask questions, Randy Abrams from UBS. Please ask your question.
Yes, thank you. I wanted to ask actually a question on the outlook for second quarter. I think you referred to it as a normal, normal decline. I'm curious if that's the... If you think it's the new normal pattern, just given the flagship launches. Traditionally, you saw a rebound or a seasonal ramp in second quarter, and just how you're viewing the broader Android smartphone cycle, if you're viewing some inventory adjustment after the strong restocking, and if you think it's a one-quarter issue, that third quarter, we're back to growing in the smartphone business.
Well, Randy, I think, if you look at the overall market, we said it's 1.2 billion units, which is about maybe 2% increase year-over-year. It's not really major increase. And so, at the end of the day, every quarter, every, you know, after four quarters, we'll balance out. But there's no question that the fourth quarter last year and first quarter this year represent a pretty strong restocking demand, and as a result, our our selling to our OEM customers. But this this trend is, as I said, is now reaching a normal level. So that's why we're, we're seeing some impact from a sequential point of view.
Saying all that, we also said in our remarks that, while the overall demand increased by low single digits in the unit, but the high-end segment, by high-end, we can broadly define as, I'm going to use the RMB pricing, RMB 4,000 and up models. I think the growth in that area, in that segment is much better compared to the other segments. And, as we also are making progress in gaining shares in the flagship SoCs, so our addressable market is quite a bit higher in the change. So,
Increased.
I'm okay. I think for the whole year, we give you the outlook also for the mobile phone. We are very confident in that.
Thanks, yeah. Yeah, thank you. I'll, I'll ask a follow-up to that. There's been a lot of remarks, this results even it's, relatively muted first half, but some are expecting we start to see a bit of pickup, second half. I'm curious, when you look across your businesses, how you see smart edge and power management, how you're viewing kind of inventory levels, demand, like the initial cut, what you're seeing, if you're seeing improving prospects from those, as we look out half on half?
I think we're Randy, we have given an outlook in U.S. dollar terms for yearly revenue growth being a target, of course. And you have now the first half numbers,
Mm-hmm.
But with the guidance, I'm sure you all have the second half estimate. But yeah, we at the beginning of the year, we stated that 2024 is a moderate growth year overall. We remain that. And so the second half number is not surprising. The restocking momentum actually demonstrates the most in the smartphone products. Other products, I think, more stable. There were some in the first quarter for the TV and the connectivity, but the magnitude of which is more moderate in nature. So again, we said what we said, being a moderate year, and I believe the number we give, the mid-teens growth for the whole year, is a very achievable target. Thank you.
Okay, yes, thank you. And the last question I wanted to ask on the flagship, where you mentioned the over 50% growth, is that mainly from the gains you see current cycle? I'm curious, as you go into the new cycle, the early design activity, and as you look at the different pieces, Qualcomm will move to the Nuvia core, so they upgrade the CPU. But how are you looking? Are you viewing the system performance, with more attention now on the AI engine in that software? Like, how do you view your growth, moving into the next cycle at this early stage? And also, how do you view content, where you're—It sounds like you're gonna upgrade the AI engine and also the higher cost from 3-nanometer. How do you see the content for the flagship category?
Okay. For the flagship SoC 9300, I want to say, is our third generation SoC 9400, of course, the fourth one. I think 9300. We started 9300 as kind of a, I wouldn't call it a breakthrough, but it's a major leap in our not only the capability, but also our penetration with the key customers. And we're seeing very strong growth from 9300. And I have full confidence in our 9400, the especially in our computing capabilities. The CPU core that we're working with Arm, our partner, our close and deep partner, we have no, we have no issue with our performance and our power capability for our 9400 CPU cores.
For the APU modules, did we say our, our TOPS before?
Not yet.
No? Not yet. Okay, I guess I'm not saying, I think I'm supposed to say it, but yeah, I can guarantee you, 9300 were about 37, 35 TOPS APU, and a significant improvement for 9400. And these... Actually, I remember I talked to one key customer, and they are surprised to hear such data from our flagship SoC. With that, and with our NeuroPilot platform, we are now also engaging with most of the developer community and the ecosystem players. I think the key here is to enable all the applications with the edge devices, so people can find not only AI being useful, productive, and I believe more importantly, fun for their life. And there's a great future for this flagship SoC business for MediaTek. Thank you.
Okay. And could you say the content, and then I'll drop back in the queue, but could you say the content increase, factoring those enhancements and the node migration?
Yeah. I think I kind of say that it's mainly, especially in our computing, the CPUs, the GPUs, and the APUs, and of course, and our ISPs. They are getting, we're using up the other 3 nm, what? Of course, there's, you know, there's a limit to the die size for the SoC for a phone format. But the CPU content, I'm sorry, computing content continue to to increase and in... But you have to also realize our computing content increase while our consumption capability improves. I think that's the that's what we've been able to do, and that's what will get ourselves more market share. Thank you.
Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you.
The next one is Brett Simpson from Arete Research. Just a reminder, please limit your questions to two at a time to allow more participants to join the discussion. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks very much. Rick, I wanted to ask about just the AI smartphone market and what portion of the overall smartphone market might be enabling Gen AI this year? And how do you see the adoption curve playing out into the second half and maybe into next year? And what sort of market share of the Android AI smartphone market does MediaTek hope to achieve over the sort of medium to long term? Thank you.
Well, Brett, I think just your last question, I think we can achieve 30% of China, the Android smartphone flagship smartphone market share short term, short term. Hopefully, of course, we aim higher. I think many people ask the question about whether generative AI will accelerate the replacement cycle, for instance. What I believe and I've observed maybe can be said in two aspects. One, the applications from the Gen AI, I think it's now in the early stage of being deployed and or maybe also spread into the user environment. The fact that the move towards high-end phone, as by the way, this movement is pretty very fast. The high-end phone segment is growing very fast.
I think, kind of, it exemplifies that, the trend. As more people get more used to and more maybe addicted to Gen, Gen AI applications, I think the trend can only accelerate. So, of course, along with it, the much higher content, the technology, silicon content. So again, for us, as I said just now, another critical thing is to accelerate the applications, development, and deployment together with our partners in the ecosystem and the developer community. Only in doing so can we, together, expand the market and have, you know, consumers enjoy the benefits.
Mm.
Thank you.
Rick, just to follow up on that, you talked about the TOPS performance of the 9300. I think we're all expecting a big upgrade with the 9400 later this year. But, can you maybe just talk a little bit about how this translates to content growth for MediaTek in smartphones, or, you know, the die size that's allocated to the NPU, how it changes? I think most folks are expecting maybe about 60 TOPS in the next generation chips that are coming out for flagship later this year. But, you know, how does that—how do we think about the content translation for MediaTek? Thank you.
I think, Brett, you have certainly done your homework. I'm not going to argue against your comments. I think 9400 is our CPU core. I really feel very strongly in a good way. So, and yeah, there's a clock rate, the performance of the IPC, and not to mention our APU's TOPS. I really feel 9400 will make 9300 well, really outshine 9300 by quite a bit, by quite a bit. I know I'm being kind of qualitative, but I think I'm conveying a very clear message in this way. Thank you.
Just by the way-
Brett, die size, no matter what technology we use, 3nm, we still have one. You know, the die size, we use up all the die size, period.
Yeah.
And a lot of which goes to computing, as you can imagine.
Yeah. For my second question, Rick, I wanted to ask about Wi-Fi 7. And just to understand the ASP change that we're seeing here, I think MediaTek is making a double shrink. I think you were on 22-nanometer for the previous Wi-Fi generation, and you're moving to 6nm with Wi-Fi 7. And you're definitely viewed as among the tier ones in this transition. So can you maybe talk a little bit about your market share ambitions and what sort of ASP changes we see as Wi-Fi 7 becomes more mainstream? Thank you.
... David here. I think Wi-Fi 7 overall, from the total market and also, but technological segmentation perspective, we're actually, you know, one of the leaders in the market. Because of that, it's really just opened a lot of new opportunities for us. But in terms of the absolute market share, we probably won't be able to disclose right now. But overall, we will say it's actually pretty minimal market share for the Wi-Fi 7, given actually it's our earliest access to this technology and also actually it's the breadth of our product portfolio.
Okay, thank you.
Next one to ask questions is Gokul Hariharan from J.P. Morgan. Go ahead, please.
Thanks for taking my question. My first question is on the smartphone side of things. Last call, I think, Rick, you mentioned the flagship addressable market TAM is about $4 billion. Could you talk a little bit about how quickly is this TAM growing, given that you highlighted the strong growth that we're seeing in the flagship segment? And could you also comment about any prospects to expand this TAM by kind of breaking into some newer, larger customers beyond the customers that you already ship to? Can we expect something happening in that front in the next 1 year or 1-2 years or so?
We certainly... Well, we cannot really discuss the specific customers per se. But we certainly, again, I think our product, in my firm belief, will sell itself because of our capabilities. And we also see the OEM customers are now, of course, using the last generation flagship for their kind of a sub-flagship phone. And all those increase the addressable market. So the driving force, really underlying driving force is the move toward the high-end phone, be they the flagship or the, what we call premium phones. The trend really provides the addressable market driving force for us. Thank you.
So any thoughts on how quickly this is growing? I think given that last quarter you offered a $4 billion TAM number for your immediate flagship TAM.
Yeah, I think we talked about $4 billion being our TAM, MediaTek TAM. Again, I think that addressable market, as I said earlier, it will see a mid-teen % level of growth. That's why we are stating that we... That's part of the reason that we are stating our growth of 50% and better in the flagship SoC area.
Okay. Thank-
Am I answering your question?
Yeah, I think that's clear. Thank you. My second question is on the data center ASIC. I just wanted to understand how MediaTek is positioning itself in the data center ASIC market with, especially the CSP customers. I think some of your competitors, I think Broadcom obviously has talked about pretty high market share. Marvell, I think, recently talked about having or targeting 25% market share in custom ASICs for accelerators and other products by 2028. So I just wanted to understand how MediaTek is positioning when you do your business planning, what are the kind of targets that you are looking for?
I think, if I remember a few years back, Rick, you talked about potentially hitting a $1 billion run rate for the non-consumer ASIC business. How soon can we anticipate something like that happening, for MediaTek?
Yeah, we definitely are on our way to an Arm computing revenue stream in the near future. But in addition, again, AI data center, what we call data center AI accelerator, and mainly in the compute area, represent a very large TAM, certainly for MediaTek also. We look at that TAM to be about $40 billion by 2028, right? It's about $12 billion in 2024. So it's a tremendous upside, and as I said earlier, you know, the key component to get to this AI compute, AI accelerator business, computing, obviously, the leading edge process node, advanced packaging technology, foundry those foundation technology. And please also remember, to connect the cloud and the edge, we have all the wireless and wired connectivity technology.
And also the way we are now working with ecosystem players, I really believe that will position MediaTek to be one of the major players in this, well, by 2028, $40 billion TAM business. We are the company certainly investing heavily in this. Thank you.
So, Rick, maybe one follow-up is, of the $40 billion TAM, what would you consider a reasonable success? Is it like 10% market share by 2028, would be a reasonable success for MediaTek?
Well, I don't think we will give this forecast yet, but I think that kind of number is certainly within our expectations. Thank you.
Great. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Next one to ask questions, Bruce Lu from Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, please.
Okay, thank you for taking my question. I want to follow up the last question earlier. What is the AI smartphone penetration it looks like for 2024 and 2025? And moving beyond those, edge or inference, what is the latest strategy for MediaTek? What kind of business model and value proposition for your MediaTek DaVinci, you know, what kind of business you want to do for that, for that product? Or what is your expectation for the AI age?
Maybe I commenting on DaVinci first, and also for the AI as a smartphone penetration, probably, so we can talk about that. I think DaVinci first is a, it's a platform. It's a, it's a co-work platform MediaTek use internally. Basically, it's, you know, that's one of the effective tool for us, for all our engineers, just co-work, using the GenAI's, you know, tools. Because it's actually very powerful and also very useful. A lot of the external party are trying to leverage that, so we do actually open up to other part. But to be honest, this is actually not business model, this is more for operation side. So I would say probably, we don't need to mix that with our business outlook. That'll be probably still, to be easier. So that's, that's about DaVinci.
I think, Bruce, the way to look at what you just said, AI smartphone penetration. I believe actually, the best way right now is to look at again, the high-end smartphone, its volume and the market share, how that has grown, this year and how that will continue growing next year. It's very difficult to get a number, say, this is AI smartphone or AI PC, for that matter. Because what we know and what we are working very hard on is to ensure that our chips can provide all the technology capability and to enable all the generation AI applications and future applications for our OEM customers.
We are fully confident in that. This for the AI GenAI application to be developed and deployed takes, of course, an industry-wide effort, ecosystem-wide effort. MediaTek actually is taking a pretty proactive attitude in that, and we will have some major event in the coming weeks from that point of view. Thank you.
But I thought you got, you know, proliferate into the mid-end chips next year. So most of your mid-end chips will have the AI function. That could, you know, potentially be a big boost for the AI and AI smartphone penetration rate. Is that the right observation?
Yeah, I think it's the right observation. I think, currently for this year's, so for the APU is already on 900, 9000 series and also 8000 series as well. And so like Rick say, right now, the key objective is really trying to proliferate about the AI ecosystem, because for the hardware side, we do have the leading APU there. But now, actually, we need more ecosystem partner to jump on the wagon to basically develop more, you know, applications or service, both on edge or leverage edge device. But going forward, we do have the plan to extend that APU capability even into the different segment, into different segment.
Okay. Okay, my next question is for the ASIC business. So do you want to do the pure design service business, with lower gross margin, but huge operating leverage, or do we want to provide more IP value? For example, like, you know, Rick just mentioned a lot about, like, 224 G, SerDes which is a key successful factor for AI accelerators. So what is our latest progress and how confident that we can be very competitive in all those IP required for the, you know, ASIC business?
I wanna say that we definitely will be and want to be an IP rich value, high-value add supplier. But of course, we always remain flexible in our business model. The thing really is that we... The important thing is we invest in those high-value add IPs. Well, SerDes being a good example, not to mention the process node, the packaging, and the, I think, we, MediaTek, is, I mean, we strive to be a tier one supplier. Maybe that's another way of saying it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, with the interest of time, we are going to take the last two participants to ask questions. Now it's time for Brad Lin from Bank of America. Go ahead, please.
Thank you, management, for taking my question. I have two questions. One is on the, well, regarding the ASIC. Regarding this, industry landscape, besides the, well, current players, we also see, well, many more so-called established large fabless company, begin the investment. So would you mind elaborate the strengths that, MediaTek has compared to them? And also, what will be the key difference whether, a firm joins the, Arm Neoverse or not? Thank you. That's my first question.
Okay, friend, I think, so, like, we, we reiterate several time, I think, so first of all, the focus of what you are talking about on the cloud or on data center side, is really just the AI accelerator, and especially for the compute part, especially on the compute, because actually, there are other components out there as well, but compute is the key. And, traditionally, I think that including CPU, GPU, and now we're talking about XPU, you know, most likely for GPU. I think with our technology, and also especially the foundation technology like SerDes, advanced SoC capability, and also the leading-edge process node technology, I think we are actually, one of the key player and important player to compete effectively. Well, another part actually is the ecosystem partner and also our, actually, the operations scale.
If after all, by end of day, it's actually, if we have the right cost structures, both on our operations side and also from the, the wafer side, I think that could be a very important element as well to stand us out among all competitor, especially for the leading those part. So I think only more, I think the key word, which is the computing technology, and, you know, very much in MediaTek products, one of the leading company produce so many connected computing device every year. And, and we will just extend that technology and also the advantage from the traditional edge device now actually into the cloud computing element. Likewise, all the foundation technology, a lot of that will be leveraged and expand into the cloud space as well.
Got it. Thank you very much. So my second question will be on the, well, PMIC. We know MediaTek has done quite well at bundle and selling our PMIC offerings. What will be the key growth drivers into the next two years? Thank you.
Okay, so PMIC, the areas that we are really focusing in and investing in is in automotive and the data center area. We actually form... We have formed a R&D team in the U.S., in Japan, so that we can build those leading, well, I would say, leading-edge PMIC. We also invest in the process capability with our foundry partners, so that we can take advantage of the right power devices to gain advantages. So we have good effort, and, yeah, we expect good growth from our PMIC business. Thank you.
Thank you very much. So last thing on dividend, MediaTek shareholder obviously have received special dividend in the past 3 years on top of the 80%-85% payout. Should we expect MediaTek to start another round of special dividend or raise the payout ratio? Thank you.
Currently, I think currently, there are two elements for our cash dividend. One is the payout, another one is the special dividend. I think for payout, basically it's nothing changed right now. For the special dividend, we're still actually on the very last payment of the special dividend. For the new one, we will discuss with the board and also report everyone when actually once finalized.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Okay, the last one to ask questions, Charlie Chan from Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, please.
Thanks for taking my question, Rick, David, and Jesse. So again, so congrats for a very good result margin side and also 2Q revenue full year seems to be going well. So my first question is about you, do you—Rick, you seem to suggest that high-end smartphone demand is doing well. I'm not sure if you relate it to the AI. I'm wondering whether MediaTek has any evidence or feedback that a high-end smartphone demand is related to the GenAI? And if there's a kind of so-called killer apps, what would they be? Thank you.
Again, Charlie, I think I said that earlier. Very early stage for the generative AI applications on actually any devices. If you think about it, the people need, I believe, to get their devices, which are capable of exercising those applications when they become available and when they become also attractive. And that, that's hard and, I think that's why we're taking a very proactive stand in working with the ecosystem and the developer community, so we can together enable new applications and hope and exciting applications. So that, so my view for this is, of course, it's also very, just like if you ask whether how many people are buying the camera capability for their phone?
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Very difficult to quantify.
Yeah.
But the important thing for us is not to try to, you know, cherry-pick. We provide just a very powerful phone and very low power consumption to our consumers.
I see. Yeah. So yeah, thanks, thanks for the, for the, feedback. Yeah, because the company seems continue to enlarge the APU capability. So I thought, you might have some, you know, reason behind, right? For example, you already see the killer apps, for-
Oh, oh, oh-
The next generation apps. Yeah.
Well, first thing first, we have to be able to, for instance, run 7 billion parameter model or up to 13 billion model, and we need that kind of computing power. But those are, I think, again, are the must-
Mm.
for our structured chips.
Got you. So thank you. And my second question is about the smartphone seasonality. So I understand that we are kind of in a restocking mode for China smartphone. First of all, how long do you think this restocking is going to last? I'm not sure your view about China economy's recovery. And because the company, you know, gave the full year revenue guidance, right? So I'm surprised that you already have a visibility for the second half. Are you confident about the second half recovery?
Well, Charlie, David here. First of all, I think, seasonality, if you look back in the last few years, including this year, the so-called seasonality may vary year-over-year. Taking last year, for example, you know, we're ranking from first quarter to fourth quarter, you see very strong quarter-over-quarter growth. All that, and that momentum left until first quarter this year. And, but, you know, the second quarter for us, that becomes, you know, the mathematics. You know, we have a high first quarter, you know, second quarter coming down. But if you look, the key issue is for looking for the full year. That's why I think, Rick actually spent some time in his opening remark, talking about we always start with the year-over-year, the slow down, which is low, by the way, 2%. Okay?
Mm.
But you, you build up from that, and that gives you the product migration, product segmentation, and that actually leads to our meeting. So that's the answer to you directly. Our confidence is not based on so-called a strong rebound. The confidence really based on year-over-year, only 2% revenue growth. And the truly confidence is really just the product segmentation expansion, and more importantly, a very successful smartphone expansion and also growth. Okay? And, and with that expansion, smartphone, we tend to know what's the design, design situation right now, and also even for the fourth generation, 9400, we're trying to know the design, design situation already. So we feel fairly confident for our growth target. I think that's it. But anything else in between is really just a pattern.
What really matters is with full years of dollar growth. I think that's the key.
Hmm. I can understand.
I just add one more word, Charlie, about-
Yeah.
The smartphone sales goes out from China also to the overseas market.
Hmm.
China market is a big part, but it's not the only part. And I, I understand your point about China may be not growing much as, as a whole. But well, we certainly don't disagree. However, the China markets, again, that movement toward high-end phone is significant. It is ongoing, and you will not... We don't believe that will stop. However, the market outside of China is probably compensating for some of China's a lot, I mean, not buying what is the entry-level phone as many as before. Other people, the 4G to 5G migration is continuing, and actually, if anything, it's probably accelerating at the low end of 5G segment.
So putting together, as David just said, if you look at the whole year, I think we are, well, we cannot say we know exactly what will happen, but we're quite confident. Thank you.
Okay, that, that's fair enough. Thanks, gentlemen. Much appreciated.
Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for all your questions. Now, I'll hand it over to Miss Jessie Wang for closing comment. Miss Wang, please go ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes MediaTek 2024 first quarter conference call. An audio replay will be available in one hour after the call at the investor section of MediaTek's website. We would like to thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect. Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Jesse, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. You may disconnect your line now. Thank you. Bye-bye. Goodbye.