Just how big is the mobile phone market? Most analysts believe handset makers will ship about 1.1bn phones this year – down 7 per cent from last year, making this the industry’s first-ever fall in annual sales, but still about one new phone for every six people on earth. Others, eyeing booming sales at MediaTek, a Taiwanese chipmaker, think that number may underestimate the true size of the market by a substantial margin.

Little-known outside Taiwan, MediaTek is on track to ship more than 300m mobile chips this year, double the number two years ago. Its sales have raised eyebrows at a time when the rest of the industry is struggling. Gartner, the market researchers, had only expected the group to move about 200m chips this year. Adjust for faulty chips and the use of multiple chips in one handset, and Credit Suisse thinks MediaTek’s numbers suggest the mobile phone market could be 17 per cent larger than previous estimates suggest.