TAIPEI/ HSINCHU, Taiwan -- When Rick Tsai took the CEO position at MediaTek more than four years ago, industry experts and investors all thought he had been handed a poison chalice.
Then the world's second-largest mobile chip developer after Qualcomm of the U.S., MediaTek was locked in a ferocious price war for 4G smartphone chips. The company's operating margin hit a historic low and it reported its first ever loss in its smartphone chip business. Making matters worse, MediaTek's most important chip offering of 2017 was a flop, with very few smartphone makers agreeing to use it.
