About half of new smartphone models launched by China's smartphone vendors, including the top-four players Huawei, Xiaomi Technology, Oppo and Vivo, as well as other brands, by the year-end 2018 will come with enriched AI applications, according to sources from Taiwan's IC-design houses.

The sources pointed out both Qualcomm and MediaTek have provided positive business outlook for the second quarter of 2018 as the two firms are ramping up shipments of AI-centric chipset solutions to China-based smartphone makers.

MediaTek's Helio P60 chipsets as well as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800, 700 and 600 series mobile platforms have come with NPU (neural processing unit) components packed with AI applications to meet ever rising demand from China's smartphone vendors, said the sources.

China's smartphone makers are embracing AI applications, leveraging related applications with IoT networks, big data, and cloud services for cross-border and cross-industry cooperation in order to expand their products and application ecosystem exponentially, said the sources.

Sources from Taiwan's IC-design houses are expecting MediaTek to post a more than 20% sequential revenue growth in the second quarter as the company's AI-capable Helio P60 SoCs have continued to make headway in China's smartphone market.

MediaTek has been preparing to launch its next-generation Helio chipsets to continue to build up the ecosystem for its AI-enabled chips and also sustain its revenues and gross margin in the second half of 2018, the sources added.

However, MediaTek's next-generation AI-enabled chips may not come until the availability of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 700 series CPUs expected in the second quarter of 2018, indicated the sources.