MediaTek's Dimensity 9000 may cost significantly more than its predecessor

The chipset is reportedly cheaper than Qualcomm's upcoming flagship chipset, though.

What you need to know

• A new leak claims that MediaTek's new Dimensity 9000 will cost twice as much as its predecessor.
• The chipset isn't expected to make its way to the budget-friendly smartphones in 2022.
• However, the processor is likely to be less expensive than Qualcomm's upcoming flagship chipset.

A few weeks ago, MediaTek announced its new Dimensity 9000 flagship chipset, the first smartphone chipset built on the 4nm process. However, unlike the Dimensity 1100 and 1200 premium SoCs that came with 5G and advanced AI capabilities, the latest one may not appear in many of the budget Android phones next year.

According to a Weibo post by leaker Digital Chat Station, the Dimensity 9000 is almost twice as expensive as the Dimensity 1200 (via GSMArena). The latter debuted earlier this year alongside the Dimensity 1100 to give the Snapdragon 888 a run for its money. These premium SoCs are now powering some of this year's low-cost smartphones, such as the OnePlus Nord 2, Realme X7 Max 5G, Redmi Note 10 Pro 5G, and Xiaomi 11T.

However, given the new leak, we may not see MediaTek's latest premium chipset on the same segment of mobile devices that are set to launch next year. The Dimensity 9000 is billed as the company's first full-fledged flagship processor, capable of competing with Apple's Bionic A15 in terms of speed and Google Tensor in terms of AI capabilities.

That said, the leaker further claims that the new Mediatek chipset is still less expensive than Qualcomm's upcoming flagship processor dubbed the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Qualcomm isn't expected to unveil its next-generation premium processor until the Tech Summit that's set to take place between November 30 and December 1 in Hawaii.

While it remains to be seen what phones will be powered by the Dimensity 9000, it looks like these future smartphones will have a lower price tag than upcoming devices slated to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 next year.

Digital Chat Station also mentioned the Dimensity 7000 SoC, an in-development processor that could use Cortex-A78 cores and be built on a 5nm process. This could imply that Mediatek is working on a lower-cost chipset that will be released in the future.