Microchips

The Taiwanese chipmaker Mediatek has overtaken Qualcomm at the top in the third quarter of 2020 to become the world's largest smartphone chipmaker, according to findings from Counterpoint.

As the market researchers from Counterpoint report, the US chip developer Qualcomm is now only number 2 when it comes to the quantities sold of SoCs (system-on-a-chip) for smartphones. After that, Mediatek from Taiwan, with a market share of 31 per cent, beat Qualcomm with 29 per cent in the past third quarter of the year.

At 10AM (PST) today, 10 November, Apple unveiled their newest chip for their Mac products. Called the M1, this chip is the first to be designed by the Silicon Valley company.

In the video, introduced by Tim Cook, members of staff go in to detail about how the chip is formed, and which out of their Mac lineup will be the first to use the chip.

The 3 products announced as using the M1 chip are:

• Apple MacBook Air 13in (which also no longer has a fan inside)

• Apple Mac Mini - the company's desktop computer

• Apple MacBook Pro 13in

All devices come with impressive new optimisations in the battery and speed departments. The new devices are available to pre-order now, and will be delivered starting 17 November.

They also announced that the newest software update for their Macs (macOS Big Sur) will finally launch on 12 November, after what some people say has been one of the longest times between announcement and launch.