TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Fabless Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek was ranked the fifth largest IC designer by revenue in the third quarter by market research firm TrendForce.

MediaTek saw a quarter-on-quarter drop in revenue of 11.6% to NT$152 billion (US$4.68 billion), according to TrendForce. MediaTek was hampered by weak sales figures for Chinese smartphone brands and clients going through inventory corrections.

MediaTek saw revenue declines from mobile solutions, smart edge platforms, and power ICs in the third quarter. TrendForce noted that looking ahead, inventory reduction will remain MediaTek’s main priority.

Fellow Taiwanese IC designer Realtek, which ranked seventh in Q3, saw revenue decline by 5.5% from the previous quarter to US$979 million. Realtek saw networking and automotive application sales remain stable in Q3, but due to reduced overall demand for consumer electronics, its chips for computers, which account for 32% of its product mix, negatively affected overall performance, TrendForce said.

Taiwan-based Novatek, which came in eighth in the third quarter, saw a massive drop of 39.9% from the previous quarter to US$643 million. This was due to its two main products, SoCs and display driver ICs, being affected by declines in both price and shipments, the report found.

Meanwhile, US-based IC designers took the top four spots in Q3, with Qualcomm coming in first, followed by Broadcom, Nvidia, and AMD.

Looking ahead to Q4 and Q1 next year, TrendForce said that due to continuing inflation and holiday sales, it does not expect overall demand for consumer electronics to increase significantly. In addition, it said that more time is needed for inventory level adjustment for the demand side of the chip market.