Beancounters at Digitimes Research said that on a yearly basis, smartphone AP shipments in China showed a decline of 2.2 percent in the third quarter but are likely to see growth in the fourth quarter due to a lower base recorded a year ago.

Efforts by China's vendors including Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo to ramp up their overseas shipments in 2018 have achieved remarkable results, particularly in India and Eastern Europe, lending momentum to smartphone AP shipments to China vendors.

China-based HiSilicon Technologies, a smartphone AP subsidiary of Huawei, has helped significantly.

The willingness of China's vendors to incorporate AI accelerators into smartphone APs could be affected in the fourth quarter due to concerns of increased AP cost and selling prices of end-market devices.

Venders will show more eagerness in migrating to more advanced process nodes for manufacturing their smartphone APs, with the ratio of APs made using 2the 8nm process to continue to decline, Digitimes Research said.

MediaTek recently showed off its new mobile SoC, the Helio P70, the impact of this chip on sales of Qualcomm's rival products will be limited as the specification upgrades of the P70 are not significant as compared to its predecessor the Helio P60.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm has rolled out new products, including Snapdragon 670, 675 and 710, and will see its AP shipments in China continue to grow.

Qualcomm will launch its new flagship AP, built using 7nm process, in the fourth quarter of 2018. Digitimes Research said that smartphones built with Qualcomm's 7nm APs will hit the market in the first half of 2019, boosting the ratio of 7nm products in the smartphone AP segment.