You either get a design win or you don't. In IMG's case, for several high volume, low cost, Mediatek mobile Socs, they did not get them. Whatever their "chance" was of winning we don't know. We do know that they didn't win them. One assumes, if Mediatek took rational decisions, that the determination was that the Mali option was better than the PowerVr option. For those chips that would be primarily based on cost, where die-size is a crucial factor.
I have seen enough die-shots of Mali400 implementations for it to strongly suggest to me that Mali400 is very good use of die-area at that performance level. Evidentially, I'd say there is a good case to suggest that series5 was not competitive at the low end. The argument for implementing T-series seems less clear to me.
In the broader picture I would suggest that IMG was, understandably, more focused on R&D-ing high performance solutions, given that their major customer, Apple, who went on to provide 40% & 45% of their entire technology income in FYs 2012 & 2013 respectively, was keen for performance and perf/watt and seemingly not too concerned about die area.
So the R&D priority was the right one. What am I saying ? I'm saying they should have R&D-ed low cost solutions with equal vigor, using the money there, rather than throwing money away in their CE division that just keeps on / and will continue to, lose many millions a year. in the two years mentioned above, the CE division lost £11.8M.....and another 8.6M in the most current year.
