Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the MediaTek 2024 Third Quarter Investors' Conference Call. Financial results and presentations for today's call are available on the Investors' Section of the company website at www.mediatek.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Jessie Wang, Deputy Director of Investor Relations. Ms. Wang, please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Joining us today are Dr. Rick Tsai, MediaTek CEO, and Mr. David Ku, MediaTek CFO. Mr. Ku will report out the quarter results, and then Dr. Tsai will provide our prepared remarks. After that, we will open for Q&A. As a reminder, today's presentation will provide forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. The statements are subject to various risks and factors which may cause actual results materially to be different from the statements. The presentation material supplements non-T-IFRS financial measures. Earnings distribution will be made in accordance with financial statements based on T-IFRS. For details, please refer to the safe harbor statement in our presentation slides. In addition, all contents provided in this teleconference are for your reference only, not intended for investment advice. Neither MediaTek nor any of the independent providers is responsible for any actions taken in reliance on contents provided in today's call.
Now, I would like to turn the call to our CFO, Mr. David Ku, for the third quarter financial results.
Thank you, Jessie. Good afternoon, everyone. Now, let's start with the 2024 Third Quarter financial results. The currency used here is NT dollars. Revenue for the quarter was NT$131.8 billion, up 3.6% sequentially and up 19.7% year-over-year. Gross margin for the quarter was 48.8%, flat from the previous quarter and up 1.4 percentage points from the year-ago quarter. Operating expense for the quarter was NT$40.5 billion, compared with the NT$37.2 billion in the previous quarter and NT$34.2 billion in the year-ago quarter. Operating income for the quarter was NT$23.9 billion, down 4.4% sequentially and up 33% year-over-year. Non-T-IFRS operating income for the quarter was NT$24.3 billion. Operating margin for the quarter was 18.1%, down 1.5 percentage points in the previous quarter and up 1.8 percentage points year-over-year. Non-T-IFRS operating margin for the quarter was 18.4%.
Net income for the quarter was NT$25.6 billion, down 1.4 percentage points sequentially and up 37.8% year-over-year. Non-T-IFRS net income for the quarter was NT$25.9 billion. Net profit margin for the quarter was 19.4%, decreased one percentage point from the previous quarter and increased 2.5 percentage points year-over-year. Non-T-IFRS net profit margin for the quarter was 19.7%. EPS for the quarter was NT$15.94, down from NT$16.19 in the previous quarter and up from NT$11.64 in the year-ago quarter. Non-T-IFRS EPS for the quarter was NT$16.15. A reconciliation table for our T-IFRS and non-T-IFRS financial measure is attached in our press release for your information. And that concludes my comments. Thank you.
Thank you, David, and now I would like to turn the call to our CEO, Dr. Rick Tsai, for prepared remarks.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. MediaTek delivered flawless third quarter results. Quarterly revenues were at the high end of the guidance range, with all three revenue groups achieving both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth. Quarterly gross margin exceeded guidance range due to a favorable product mix. Before we dive into business updates for the three revenue groups, I'd like to share some of our recent developments. Earlier this month, we unveiled our first flagship 3 nm SoC, Dimensity 9400, a powerful chip designed and optimized for edge AI applications. Dimensity 9400 offers leading platform performance and outstanding power efficiency for premium user experiences. It continues the all-big core design built on Arm's latest v9.2 CPU to demonstrate strong computing capability. Combined with the most advanced GPU, Dimensity 9400 brings PC-level graphics and gaming experiences to mobile devices.
In addition, as an AI enabler, we integrate our 8th generation NPU into Dimensity 9400 to unleash more AI features. For example, Dimensity 9400 supports AI applications that are capable of providing intelligent recommendations for tasks such as hotel and flight scheduling or meal ordering by mimicking human behaviors. The AI first analyzes users' past preferences, calendar entries, and other relevant information to come up with practical solutions. It then automatically completes the task based upon users' final decision. We refer to this capability as Agentic AI, and our customers' flagship phones are leading the industry to bring Agentic AI applications to the market. To further accelerate the development of Agentic AI applications, we work closely with Google and the ecosystem to create a unified interface that allows these applications to run more efficiently.
We also optimize our SoC to support the latest large language models, such as Google's Gemini Nano multimodal models and Meta's Llama 3.2 model. We believe these efforts will significantly reduce the development time of Agentic AI applications and help foster the creation of potential killer applications. With our leading product, close collaborations with the ecosystem and the world's broadest edge device footprint, we believe that we are an ideal partner for edge computing players. We aim to empower a wide range of AI-capable edge computing devices, such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, automotive, and more, with our robust and efficient technologies. On the cloud side, we remain fully committed to executing our enterprise ASIC strategy, aiming at a sizable $45 billion custom AI accelerator market projected for 2028.
With our key capabilities in the leading 112G and 224G SerDes, complex IC integration, advanced process nodes, and advanced packaging, we continue to actively engage with CSPs for more AI accelerator opportunities. With that, now let me talk about the recent business performance of our three revenue groups. Mobile Phones accounted for 54% of total revenue in the third quarter, growing 33% year-over-year and growing 4% sequentially. In the third quarter, demand for our 4G SoCs from emerging markets increased sequentially, while demand for 5G SoCs was flat. For the fourth quarter, the strong ramp of Dimensity 9400 is expected to offset the lower seasonal demand for the mainstream and entry segments. Therefore, we expect mobile phone revenue to grow sequentially in the fourth quarter. Our Dimensity 9400 has received high recognition from both customers and the market.
Compared with Dimensity 9300 at the same stage, there are more models adopting Dimensity 9400, including flagship Smartphones from Vivo, Oppo, and Redmi. We have also observed strong sales momentum for Smartphones powered by Dimensity 9400. For example, Vivo announced that the sales of its X200 series have reached 200% of the previous generation sales during the same period, breaking Vivo's sales record with new devices. With the encouraging development, we now expect flagship revenue to grow by more than 70% this year, exceeding our prior expectation of more than 50%. Now, let me move on to Smart Edge platforms. This group grew 8% year-over-year and grew 3% sequentially in the third quarter, accounting for 40% of total revenue. In the third quarter, both connectivity and computing devices grew above the company average.
Broadband connectivity continues to enjoy a good momentum as the industry transitions to Wi-Fi 7 and 10G-PON . For computing devices, our tablet business has benefited from the trend of higher generative AI adoptions. Among all the Android tablet brands, almost all the Android tablet brands have chosen MediaTek flagship SoCs for their premium AI tablets, including Samsung. There are numerous MediaTek-powered AI tablets in the market today, and we believe there will be more to come. For Automotive, we continue to secure new projects for auto cockpit solutions, especially with leading Chinese automakers, and we expect the share gain to continue. We believe they are all constructive mid to long-term growth trends for our businesses. However, for the near term, we expect Smart Edge platforms' revenue to decline in the fourth quarter due to lower seasonal demand for consumer electronics.
Now, moving on to Power IC, which accounted for 6% of total revenue in the third quarter, growing 3% year-over-year and growing 5% quarter-over-quarter. For the fourth quarter, we expect Power IC revenue to be flattish sequentially. That said, we expect new acquisitions such as data center, automotive, and industrial to continue to grow faster than the others in the future. For the fourth quarter, the strong revenue ramp of Dimensity 9400 expected to partially offset the weak seasonal demand for consumer electronics. We now expect our fourth quarter revenue to be in the range of NT$126.5 billion to NT$134.5 billion, declining 4% to up 2% sequentially, and declining 2% to up 4% year-over-year, at a forecasted exchange rate of NT$31.7 to $1 USD. Gross margin is forecasted at 47%, ± 1.5 percentage points.
Quarterly operating expense ratio to be at 32%, ± 2 percentage points. With that, we are able to exceed our annual revenue growth target of 18% in USD and achieve the gross margin target range of 46%-48%. In addition, we have completed our four-year special cash dividend program. In the last four years, combining regular and special cash dividends, we returned NT$385 billion to shareholders in total, demonstrating our commitment to reward long-term shareholders. This morning, the board has just approved our semiannual cash dividend of NT$29 per share, or NT$46.4 billion in total for the first half of 2024, which is based on a payout ratio of 80%. We remain committed to creating and delivering value to reward our long-term shareholders.
For the future, we're confident in our mid to long-term strategy to capture the growing business opportunities backed by our strong position in technology roadmap and our broad scope of technology portfolio. This concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Rick. Operator, we are now ready for Q&A session. May we please have the first question?
Yes, Jessie. And ladies and gentlemen, we are in Q&A session now. If you would like to ask questions, please press star key and one on your telephone keypad, and please ask your questions after your name is announced. And 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. And should you have more questions, please press star key and one to come back to the queue. If you would like to cancel your questions, please press star key and 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 key and one if you would like to ask questions. Thank you.
The first one to ask questions, Gokul Hariharan from JP Morgan. Go ahead, please.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon. Congrats on the good results. Thanks for taking my question. First of all, on the flagship segment, I think the growth seems to be pretty strong this year, also around 70% growth. Could we talk a little bit about how do we see the growth over the next couple of years? How much more market share gain is still left in the Chinese OEMs for MTK? What are your prospects?
How do you think about your prospects with some of the other leading global brands, especially the big Korean OEM that you have been targeting? You've had some success with the tablet products. And also, Rick, I think in the last call, you had some updates on the flagship addressable market, the SAM size and how fast it is growing. Could we get a bit of an update on that flagship addressable market, given it seems like the growth in flagship segment itself seems to be faster than what we anticipated maybe three to six months back?
Okay. Thank you for the question. Flagship SoC. Well, I think first, I think its market share among all smartphone shipments continues to grow, I think, globally and in China's domestic market. The rate at which, of course, we still will see fairly soon.
Globally, we also know that we forecast the global Smartphone shipments for 2024 will grow by about, as we said before, 2%-3% over 2023. That's the fundamental growth. Then the Smartphone, I'm sorry, the flagship Smartphone market share among all Smartphones is growing. So we certainly, by the way, we also believe 2025 will see a similar pattern compared to 2024. So for MediaTek, I think first, we certainly expect that we will definitely gain from this secular growth of the flagship phones, especially in the China market. Secondly, we also strive to gain more market share in the China market. First, we have, if you look at our Dimensity 9400, performance, capability, power consumption in every aspect, not to mention the edge AI capability and the ecosystem building. The momentum is definitely here, very good momentum.
Our 9400. Well, next year, I guess we're going to go to 9500. We have certainly good, very strong, very good product in line. Of course, we'll talk a lot more sometime next year. But we remain quite positive for our flagship SoC outlook. Outside of China market, we certainly also strive to have market share penetration, but we will not make any prediction or forecast at this time. Thank you.
So, Rick, just to follow up, so do you think you can still maintain this kind of growth rate into next year for flagship? Like 70% is obviously an impressive growth rate. I think last year was also pretty strong. Do we think we can maintain this kind of growth rate, or is it going to be a little bit slower given the market share is already relatively high?
We don't think we will be able to have this 70% growth next year as we do in 2024, well, number one, we certainly already in China market, we have about 30% of market share already. The further gain will take certainly very much more effort, which we will. We will achieve higher market share. But 70% is probably too high expectation.
Fair enough. Thank you. My second question just broadly on overall China demand, not just Smartphone, but also some of the other Smart Edge applications, given there's been some excitement about China demand in home appliances and stuff like that after the Golden Week and some of the stimulus programs. How does MediaTek think about overall China demand, given that you actually have a fairly good and broad representation of China demand? Are you starting to see some pickup in pockets of demand in China digital consumer products, or still you think that the demand is not that strong? And any expectations in terms of how you think about 2025 for the China market itself?
It's still a bit early. After all, I think the government actions started to come out, I think, late September and continue to seem to come out kind of in a continuous manner. But so whatever I said right now is preliminary. What I believe we have seen, I would say, is better than expected compared to, let's say, definitely a year ago, our view of the China market demand. I cannot really quantify very well how much better.
But if we look at the Smartphone, we look at the broadband connectivity, we look at the TV, there was more uncertainty a year ago about China's economy. Now, we feel, I cannot say we are optimistic. I cannot say that. But we certainly feel, how should I say, more comfortable with China's economy now and going forward.
Thank you. Got it. Thank you very much.
And next is Laura Chen from Citi. The line is open to you now.
Hello. Hi. Hi. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have a question about the AI ASIC business. I recall, Rick, you mentioned that the business model will be more flexible. So does that mean that MediaTek may only be in charge with some of the design process and work with other design service peers or IP providers in the longer term?
How should we think about your AI edge business potential in the longer term? I recall that, Rick, you mentioned about quite a few billions of market potential. We also expect that probably we'll be able to see the contributions in late 2025 or 2026. Can you give us a more update on the edge side? That's my first question. Thank you.
Okay. We remain very excited and, well, maybe a bit more venturesome optimistic of our data center AI edge business. We are right in execution phase of our project. It is indeed, as you said, a strong function of the business model and the collaboration model. MediaTek, in addition to our very strong fundamental capability, as we described already in my opening remarks, the business model we have, first of all, flexible. We work closely and collaboratively with our customers and potential customers.
We are definitely doing business for both very good revenue and also with operating margin strongly in mind. We certainly want to have a greater operating margin compared to the company's overall operating margin. This is really one of the company's top priorities for our future business growth. And we are determined to make that happen. And I'm very sure it will happen. The timeline is indeed very late 2025 and sometime starting 2026. Thank you.
Thank you, Rick. Yeah. Thank you. And also following that, when you work on your AI edge projects, any difficulty to secure sufficient advanced packaging capacity? Yeah. Can you share with us how would you like to secure the capacities into the longer term?
Well, we all know who the major advanced packaging supplier, technology, and capacity is. We have also over the years not only managed, but also enhanced our collaborative relationship with TSMC. As you can at least, you can tell, first of all, from our process node improvements every year. Every couple of years, we move a node with no slip, both from ramp and from EO's point of view. The very strong collaborative relationship paves the way, certainly, for the advanced packaging collaboration and the technology readiness, as well as the capacity requirements. We certainly still need some time for that very large capacity requirement, but we are already working very closely with TSMC. Thank you.
Thank you. Would you also consider to work with OSAT partner on advanced packaging if they are ready?
Yes. Depends on, you see, advanced packaging can have a spectrum of definitions in terms of its capability. Actually, we do have products which we are already working with OSAT suppliers using, well, not the TSMC level CoWoS technology, but it's certainly much better and higher in capability than the kind of commodity processes. As this trend continues to grow, and we believe OSAT providers will pick up their capabilities, and the whole industry will benefit from, I hope, a very good ecosystem, certainly led by TSMC, which the OSAT supplier to provide very reasonable capability and the supply and commercial. Thank you.
Thank you. My second question is on the on-device AI PC. We see most of the issues nowadays are at the software and the applications. So can you share with us a MediaTek approach, and how can MediaTek avoid these kind of legacy applications and software-compatible issues?
Well, Laura, I'm sorry that I have to say at this moment, I cannot really comment very specifically other than to say that we are following the progress and the difficulties that the Arm computing AI PC is encountering. We will certainly provide you with more information sometime in the future. Thank you.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in Q&A session, and please limit your question to two at a time to allow more participants to join the discussion. Thank you for your cooperation. Next one to ask question, Sunny Lin from UBS.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Very good results and guidance. So my first question is on the flagship Smartphone 5G SoCs. In the short term, with the strong demand of D9400, are you seeing some supply tightness, and therefore we should expect the strength to sustain to Q1? A bit longer term, maybe in 12 months, now with Qualcomm having this lawsuit with Arm, especially given the recent escalations, are you seeing any opportunities in terms of the client engagement or sharing opportunities?
Sunny, I think overall for the Dimensity 9400, the overall design-in and design-win situations are very good. For example, during our product announcement, I think pretty much all the tier one customers getting showcased, talking about they're adopting our solution. So for this quarter, fourth quarter, I think overall ramping up situation is actually pretty good. And also we are seeing the pipeline remain strong.
And both for the current generation and also we talk about the N minus one, basically actually the previous generation, which will continue to grow in the first quarter and by and large next year as well. From the supply chain perspective, I think overall we're getting pretty much what we need for this quarter. And actually for next quarters, I think we are pretty much getting what we need as well. So there should not be a headwind.
Got it. Sorry, David, a quick follow-up. Did you mention that overall the flagship should continue to grow sequentially into Q1?
No, this is not what we got. We just say from the design flagship design perspective, we will continue. But for the overall, we certainly see the Q1 seasonality, which we will provide later.
Got it. Well, so my second question is on the Smartphone SoC growth margin. Obviously, in Q3 and also Q4, overall the margin is better than expected. And so what's the reasons behind? And how should we think about the trend for next few quarters? I think on the cost side, obviously, TSMC is raising the cost for 5 nm and 3 nm from early 2025. Arm is also raising the licensing fee. And so would you be able to pass through all of this cost increase?
I think our goal, like we explained earlier this year, is trying to maintain the gross margin within a range, which is 46%-48%. I think we just closed the third quarter's gross margin number and also give our guidance. Overall, I think we feel comfortable to basically end for this range. For next year's, in general, I guess that's still going to be our range.
Also, like we explained earlier in last quarter, we were trying to sell our value and pass down some of the costs up to our customers. I think that still remains our strategy and goal.
Got it. Thank you.
Next one to ask question, sorry, Bruce Lu from Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, please.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. My question is regarding to the Edge AI replacement cycle. I mean, on one hand, you guys are promoting the 9400, which has pretty good customer acceptance. And either for edge Smartphone, AI Smartphone, or AI PC, chip vendors are trying to promote using their flagship chip or the most advanced chip, which obviously has a lot of AI power.
But if you want to see a higher adoption for AI or the faster replacement cycle, we expect to when do we expect to see the mid-end range of the edge AI device can have a meaningful AI function, or can we expect certain shorter replacement cycle for edge AI for 2025?
Generative AI acceptance is just a function of both hardware, software, maybe not both, hardware, software, and the ecosystem. As I said in my opening remarks, one thing MediaTek is really working very hard, and I would say very well, is to develop ecosystem partnership to enable the edge AI applications among all OEMs. Also, we are in the process of expanding with a global player such as Google together with their large language models or their smaller large language models like Gemini Nano or Llama 3.2.
I truly believe our efforts in enabling the ecosystem will bear fruit in the next couple of years because that will, I believe, excite the many potential smaller third-party developers to come up with very useful or very interesting applications. On the other hand, I have talked to high-level people in the U.S. They are also working to make their models more efficient, smaller and more efficient so they can run on the edge devices. So my feeling is for the mid-end devices such as the Smartphone to be useful for the generative AI application, that will take probably another three years, two to three years. That's just my estimate. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. So the next question is for the ASIC business again. You mentioned that the addressable market is about like $45 billion in 2028. Can you provide the second-level breakdown for this $40 billion addressable market? What kind of ingredient inside for CPU or custom ASIC or GPU or any breakdown for that? Can you achieve 10%, 20% market share by 2028? Can we have multiple customer rollout in the pipeline?
Maybe still too coarse a segmentation. $5 billion out of that $45 billion, we believe, will come from more from the CPU type of AI accelerator regime. The other 40%, I cannot tell exactly, but the customized ASIC as well as GPU or SmartNIC type of business will constitute all those 40 billion. And when we look at, we have looked not just looked, we have really investigated in great detail those different segments and their technology requirements and the potential customer lists.
We do have a strategy and a plan to pursue the ones that will fit the best with our capability and our partnership relations with Arm, with NVIDIA. So that's why I said earlier that I'm excited and optimistic about our future in this very large segment. I believe we will do well. I certainly hesitate to give you a very specific percentage, but it's not going to be an insignificant percentage. Otherwise, I wouldn't be that excited.
Okay. Okay. Fair enough.
Thank you. Next, we have Brad Lin from Bank of America. Please ask your questions.
Thank you for taking my question. So first of all, congrats on the stellar results. So I have two questions. So the first question is on the Automotive. Could the management elaborate the strategic priorities of the auto business? Obviously, the auto semi is quite big, right? And then what is the contribution currently for this year? And what will be the trajectory of the Automotive business over the next two years? Thank you. That would be my first question.
Okay. I'll give you the first. Automotive is a mid to long-term investment. We are committed to that because we recognize this is a mid to long-term, large, also stable market. MediaTek, again, has very good fundamental capabilities and strategic partnership relationships with NVIDIA that will enable us to pursue these long-term opportunities. And we have a 3 nm product, actually, which will be taken out soon. And very high performance of cockpit chip. And we have another one to follow. We are putting very significant resources into this business. And in addition, we are making real and strong progress in China market so far, which is, of course, the fastest growing market in the world now.
So I'm very happy with the progress. Although I also understand this is not a short-term type of thing, but that's exactly our strategic intentions. We want to build business that can give us long-term stable revenue and profitability also. Their current revenue is not big. It's probably a low single digit of our total revenue range. But if you look at where we were just two years ago or something, I would say our people have done a very good job. Thank you.
Thank you, Rick. So my second question would be on the, well, geopolitical thing. So, well, what are the key risks MediaTek may identify due to the, well, maybe rising geopolitical tensions? And what strategies are in place to manage this risk? Thank you.
Sorry, can you repeat the question again? Because actually, the voice somehow actually is a bit blurry. Sure.
So my second question will be on the, well, geopolitical risk. So what are the key risks that MediaTek identifies due to the geopolitical tensions? And what strategies are in place to manage this risk? Obviously, well, Trump talks about some kind of the, well, tariffs and potentially, well, more restrictions on the technologies. And, well, many of the areas can be, well, impacted. I know we have not been impacted by that, but does management see there is any potential risks coming? Thank you.
Well, this is, of course, very big and very difficult subject. I don't think anybody, any company can really elaborate this risk very well. Not to mention, there's a critical election coming in about one week. So I will not really comment on the specific risks. However, I will say for MediaTek, we have a very structured and strong compliance program.
We will comply with the rules, regulations from all governments. We will not do, shall we say, strange things, period. We will protect our company and our shareholders vigorously. Thank you.
Got it. That's very clear. Thank you.
The line now is open to Charlie Chan from Morgan Stanley.
Thanks for taking my question. Good afternoon, Rick, David, and JC. So my first question is regarding your view about what the China AI Smartphone needs to improve from here to see a real recurring cycle. Because I was there for your Dimensity 9400 product launch event and visited your booth after the product launch. And I would say there's the new features like edge training, like LoRa or AI agents, video generation are pretty interesting. But after the events, do you receive any customer feedback that whether the Smartphone sales is indeed improving?
And also, I think Apple Intelligence already rolled out, right? So if you kind of compare China's AI ecosystem or apps, how far do you think it is compared to Apple Intelligence? That is my first question. Thank you.
Okay. Charlie, David here. So maybe the second question first about the Dimensity 9400 and also what's the market situation for the flagship and also how's the AI functions on the flagship. First of all, I think for the AI functions, it's actually been well received and very popular and welcome in the marketplace. Some of the customers even have one sort of the hardware AI key. Okay? So not just a software, they just connect a software function and the service with one hot AI key. So what you can do, consider the Smartphone camera becomes your eyes.
You can just aim on whatever subject and click the AI key and use your natural voice, natural language to ask whatever question you like. Then the Smartphone will provide you the service and answer and feedback. So that's just one example. There are some other examples. So overall, I guess in terms of landing the actual AI service on the phone versus other operating system players, I think for our China customers, they're moving really, really fast. Okay? Not just demo or talk about the idea.
If you go to China right now, some of our customers already launched their Dimensity 9400 product already. You can actually play around and use the AI function for the mass production phone you brought. You don't need to wait for one quarter or two quarters later to update your software. So that's first thing first. So speed of landing is actually very good.
In terms of the usage, I believe actually like our CEO explained earlier, it's still emerging and developing for the whole ecosystem. We do believe actually with the good hardware and computation capability, plus a very aggressive customer go-to-market strategy, we will invite more players along the ecosystem to continuously improve and grow the AI ecosystem and service and features. And so far, I guess, again, this is the first wave of the product launching. Overall, the feedback we got specifically on the AI side, they all feel excited. Because after all, that's probably one of the new areas people can continuously differentiate and provide a much better user experience on the Smartphone side. I think that's actually on the AI Smartphone and also linked to the flagship.
On the overall market demand, again, like what we commented earlier, I think this year for 2024, at least for the China demand, it's actually slightly better than our original expectation. If you recall earlier when we were giving out the full-year guidance, we're talking about in U.S. dollar terms, we probably will grow mid-teens. Right now, we are probably slightly exceeding that. I think that's just one indicator or evidence or consequence of a slightly better market demand.
For next year, we still need some more time to finalize our view, but at least actually for what we see for fourth quarter and what we see some early signal from the first quarters. I think in general, it's just probably the better word to talk about is just a stabilizing and much more comforting. But in terms of the overall trend, I guess we still need some more time.
Thanks, David. So a follow-up to this is actually to Bruce's point, right? If the landing of those new features or local features in China is so fast, why not also enable your mainstream phones to have this kind of NPU or AI compute power?
I think for the AI power, AI functional NPU, I think we would definitely have planned to go beyond flagship. I think that's a positive answer.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. And my second question is also on this Qualcomm dispute on licensing. So yeah, we actually put out our notes by putting our organization's coverage and thoughts together, right? So in general, we think there should be a settlement. But in that case, do you think that is going to benefit MediaTek or not? Because the rationale here is that if there will be a settlement, Qualcomm probably needs to pay it out for the royalty.
So there's going to be a level playing field for you. But my concern is also that Qualcomm probably can access or update to most powerful Arm GPU or CPU cores. For example, this year, your Dimensity 9400 mobile gaming is so powerful, right? So if Qualcomm were to update their kind of GPU to a similar level, whether you still have the similar advantage in the flagship markets. So just that question about a potential impact. Thank you.
Well, about the dispute between our two industry peers, we cannot really comment. Except to say, MediaTek has been working very closely with Arm. Again, as evidenced by the tremendous capability demonstrated by our Dimensity 9400 SoC. And as far as we can tell, we have access, or I would say the very earliest access to our partners, the leading edge core, and also any of the features.
We have a relationship that it's not just kind of a hands-off type of a relationship. It's a collaborative relationship. The working between two companies' R&D teams is very close. The goal is to because it's truly a win-win type of relationship. So I wouldn't be concerned about whether MediaTek will be at a disadvantage, whether the dispute will end. But our strategy and our action is to build this win-win strategy and relationship as we have, and we will continue. Thank you.
Got it. Perfect. Thanks, Rick.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're very interested in the time. We are going to take the last one for the last two questions. And that would be Brett Simpson from Arete .
Yeah. Thanks very much. Rick, I had a question on the flagship Smartphone business. You mentioned 30% share in China. Is that an achievement that you reached with the D 9300, or is that a forward-looking statement looking at how you see your share developing with the 9400? And you mentioned China in your prepared remarks a lot, but you didn't mention non-Chinese customers. And I guess if I look at players like Samsung, we know the Exynos product division is struggling to kind of sustain their flagship position. And we look at Pixel, and that chip doesn't seem like it's getting much scale.
So when you look at the landscape for Android into non-Chinese customers, do you think the 9400 will start to see some meaningful penetration into these types of customers? Thank you.
Well, the market share I mentioned 30% about applies to year 2024. Of course, as I said, we strive to increase our penetration as time goes on, certainly in 2025. As to the non-China players, I cannot again really comment directly on them. Suffice to say, I think we have demonstrated the capability of our 9400 SoC very well. The decision, of course, is not for us to make easily. But I can assure you that we will spare no effort to try to gain as much market share as we can. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for that, Rick. That's clear, and maybe just to follow up for yourself or for David, MediaTek's OpEx to sales is one of the highest in the industry. I think you're obviously in investment mode in areas like Automotive and the ASICs compute, etc. But how should we think about this trend, this OpEx to sales trend over the next year or two? Are we going to see some operating leverage from the business model, or are we going to continue to see elevated spending relative to other players in the industry? Thank you.
Okay. First of all, I think actually if you look at the history of our OpEx, it's really just on the different cycles. Like you say, sometimes we need to do the investment first, and after one to two years, when the revenue comes up. So when you look just on the longer term, I think overall, if you're using two or three years average on the OpEx ratio, I think we're doing quite okay compared to the industry peer. So overall, I guess for going forward, because there are other new areas we're still trying to invest in. So maybe from a certain period, okay, you're going to see some sort of fluctuation.
But again, once when the new revenue comes in, you're going to see a much better ratio. But overall, if you're looking at our overall headcount, we've been actually controlled overhead count very nicely. So the incremental spending is actually mainly on the engineering spending, for example, the higher-end, the mask, and it's all related. And again, that should be considered about the investment for the future revenue.
Well, Brett, I'd like to add one comment. Your comment is very, very good. Well received. It is management's one of our, certainly one of our jobs to manage our OpEx ratio to the level that will benefit our shareholders more. And we understand that, and we're working very hard on that. By the way, I will quote your question to my management team. Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for all your questions. Now I would like to hand it over to Ms. Jessie Wang for closing comment. Ms. Wang, please go ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes MediaTek 2024 third-quarter conference call. An audio replay will be available in one hour after the call at the investor session of MediaTek's website. We would like to thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.