China's tablet-use application processor (AP) shipments will drop 15.5% sequentially and 13.7% on year to reach 19.15 million units in the first quarter of 2016 due to fewer working days caused by the Lunar New Year holidays and weakening demand from non-China markets, according to Digitimes Research.

MediaTek will see its market share in China's tablet AP market decline to 23.5% in the first quarter as new tablet solutions released at the end of 2015 target the high-end segment and are unlikely to ramp in shipments significantly in the quarter, Digitimes Research said.

Intel is expected to see its share climb to 19.8% in the first quarter as the chip maker has shifted its focus to promoting highly-integrated SoFIA platform products, narrowing its gap against MediaTek to 3.7pp.

China-based Allwinner Technology has seen its AP shipments gradually decline since at the end of the third quarter of 2015 and will see its share sink to 14.6% in the first quarter, Digitimes Research added.

However, Rockchip Electronics will manage to ramp its market share to 14.1% in the first quarter as the vendor has begun marketing its quad-core solutions, and its high-end solutions have been adopted by some business models.