The first 4G LTE MediaTek chipset will also sport eight cores, could see the light of day as soon as January

We've been talking a lot about MediaTek lately, and their 'true' octa-core chipset – MT6592 – in particular, and how could we not? The Taiwanese silicon slinger has been steadily gaining ground in the industry, with even giant handset manufacturers like Samsung and Sony showing more and more interest in the company's affordable solutions, as they diversify their reliance on Qualcomm. What's more, if the latest report from the Taiwan Commercial Times is to be trusted, MediaTek may be closing a major gap between its products and Qualcomm's – 4G LTE – sooner than expected.

According to the new information, the new chip, to be called MT6595, is already available for testing by manufacturers. That's not surprising in the least, seeing as China has now officially flipped the switch on LTE nationwide and the country's largest carriers have already received their licenses. The chip itself appears to be very much alike to the recently-outed octa-core MT6592 SoC, and will also be able to make use of all eight cores at once, with the added bonus of 4G LTE of course.

Be that as it may, there's no denying that, until recently, MediaTek chips were objectively inferior to the aforementioned industry leader, though some people did (and continue to) conveniently skip past price considerations. Now that the performance gap (pending verification, of course) has been shortened, however, and with 4G LTE on its way, we may finally see some (relative) diversity even in the higher end, a niche strictly under Qualcomm's dominion.

source: MTKSJ via Gizchina