Finbarr Moynihan, GM, International Sales & Marketing, MediaTek was recently in Delhi. In an interaction with TelecomTiger, he talks about MediaTek’s recently launched octacore chipset and its future plans in India. Excerpts from his interview:

Q. Tell us something about your recently launched octacore processor?

A. This is new product of MedaTek’s journey to high end market for smartphones and tablets. Unlike existing Octacore solutions in the market, which can only activate half of their CPU cores at once, MediaTek True Octacore allows for all eight of its cores to run simultaneously.

Q. Last time you used the expression “democratization of smartphones”. Can we say it will lead to the democratization of technology?

A. Yes, I hope so. Our focus is going to be on the emerging middle class of the world aspiring to move onto high end smartphones segment. 5 to 6 billion people are moving into the ever-expanding middle class, especially India, China, Southeast Asia and South Africa markets. We want to offer wide range of our products from entry level, mid-range to high end by allowing our customers and partners to bring devices to markets cost effectively and quickly.

Q. Tell us something about your future products to be launched in India?

A. India is one of the world’s leading emerging markets. Our focus would be on the tablets next year, from entry level tablets to high end tablets. We would be focusing more on LTE (4G) solutions in 2014. High end smartphones would be our target as well.

Q. With so many chipset makers like Qualcomm, Intel, Broadcom aligning with Indian handset makers, how would strategize your marketing policy?

A. This is a big market. India is the third largest smartphone market after the US and China. There is a plenty of growth opportunities.  We are aggressively looking for more partners.

Q. Intex has just launched its first smartphone with MediaTek’s octacore processor. Can we expect similar partnerships with handset manufacturers?

A. We have partnerships with all the local brands in India. They include Micromax, Lava, Spice, Karbonn and Intex. India as I said is a huge market and demand for local brand is growing.

Q. Is it true that the same chip is going to be used in Android 4.3 Jelly bean devices by end of this year and Android 4.4 Kitkat devices next year in China?

A. Yes, you are right. Google has just released Nexus 5 and 7 versions on the latest Android platform and it will take us sometime. But by early next year you will see the same platform for operators too.