MediaTek Hunts for Potential Investment Cases Amid Downturn

Taipei, Nov. 8, 2011 (CENS)--MediaTek Inc. has been hunting for potential high-tech startups in Taiwan and mainland China as its investment targets, suggesting its attempt to find new profit-making sources for its operations amid economic recession.

Taiwan's No.1 IC design house is using its investment arms, which had a total of NT$73 billion (US$2.4 billion at US$1:NT$30) in cash as of the end of the third quarter, to search for the targets.

Over the past two years, the company has put money into several IC design houses and software developers in mainland China and Taiwan.

Among the company's recent investment cases in Taiwan is a design house in the Hsinchu Science Park specializing in ballast ICs for automobile power-management system. MediaTek invested NT$80 million (US$2.6 million) to hold a 68.97% stake in the startup, which was opened in May this year by a former MediaTek executive at NT$150 million (US$5 million) in capital.

In the mainland, the company's recent cases included a software company adept at mobile payment applications, in which it invested around US$910,000, and a design house good at control chips for capacitance-type touch screens.

MediaTek executives pointed out that the company uses its new business development unit to make sense of unfamiliar industries through investments in startups before the company jumps into the industries.