Compare moats
Up to three covered companies, band by band. Every call is a curated editorial judgment, never a disclosed figure — and every band carries its cited basis.
| MediaTek | Qualcomm | Moderna | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow Counterpoint's public quarterly AP-SoC table, published 8 September 2026, shows MediaTek first in all ten quarters it covers (Q1 2024 through Q2 2026), never below 31%, with the nearest rival never above 30% -- a sustained position, not one good quarter. What the same table does not show is a widening one: the share oscillates inside a 31% to 41% band, the Q1 readings step down 41% (2024), 38% (2025), 33% (2026), and the 31% of Q2 2026 matches the lows already set in Q4 2024 and Q4 2025 rather than breaking them; Q2-on-Q2 the series runs 34%, 36%, 31%. Counterpoint also records MediaTek's shipments down more than 30% year-over-year in the quarter, the mainstream and entry tiers hit by the memory shortage and the premium tier by a 'slowdown in sales of Dimensity 9000 series powered devices.' MediaTek's own 2Q26 remarks show the gross line holding and the operating line not: gross margin 46.2%, down only 0.1 percentage points sequentially and guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 for Q3, while operating income fell 22.2% year-over-year on revenue up 1.2% as operating expenses rose to NT$47.4 billion from NT$44.5 billion. A first place held for ten quarters without extending it, and earning less on it, is defensible rather than compounding. | narrow Qualcomm's advantage is real but concentrated in one segment. The FY2025 10-K (filed 2025-11-05) describes its portfolio as "the most widely and extensively licensed in the industry" and says the industry "generally recognizes that any company seeking to develop, manufacture and/or sell certain cellular products requires a license or other rights to use our patents". That licensing leg produced $5,582M of FY2025 revenue against $38,367M at QCT, where Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi are all named in the vertical-integration risk factor and Apple already "utilizes its own modem... in certain of its smartphones". The filing frames the QCT loss as expected rather than realised. | narrow The FY2025 10-K supports a real but bounded advantage. The Competition section says the company believes "mRNA as a medicine coupled with our capabilities across mRNA technology, drug discovery, development and manufacturing provide us with a competitive advantage," and the Intellectual Property section backs that with more than 260 issued or allowed U.S. patents or applications, more than 140 granted or allowed outside the U.S., 485 pending applications, and latest-to-expire granted patents on all three approved products projected to 2041 in the U.S. and 2036 in Europe. Item 1A cuts the band down from wide: it opens the competition risk with "The vaccine market, and pharmaceutical market more generally, is intensely competitive," says Moderna "ha[s] been excluded from selling our COVID vaccines in many European markets due to a competitor's contract with the European Commission, which does not lapse until year-end 2026," that in RSV it "entered a market already occupied by two larger competitors," and that rivals "have exploited and may in the future exploit their greater size, infrastructure, resources and experience." The same section reports net losses of $2.8 billion in 2025 and $3.6 billion in 2024 against 2025 total revenue of $1.9 billion. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip MediaTek manufactures nothing itself -- its 2Q26 remarks describe 'deep design-technology co-optimization (DTCO) with TSMC' and close collaboration with advanced-packaging partners -- so the durable asset cannot be plant scale, and the remarks do not claim customer lock-in either. They locate it in a reusable design library: 'Building on our industry-leading IP portfolio, we offer best-in-class, pre-validated subsystems solutions for memory, I/O, and connectivity' -- which, the company says, 'largely reduces design complexity and shortens time to market for our data center customers'. The same remarks itemise 448G SerDes with a Co-Package Copper system solution, CPO development on TSMC's COUPE platform, and an end-to-end 3.5D platform with 'best-in-class 3.5D IP, packaging, and design flows,' and say design wins come 'backed by our industry-leading IPs, deep ecosystem partnerships, and proven execution capabilities'. The spending behind that library shows in the cost line: operating expenses of NT$47.4 billion in the quarter against NT$44.5 billion a year earlier, with the Q3 operating expense ratio guided at 31% plus or minus 2 points. It is the same library MediaTek re-amortises across mobile, edge and now data-center ASIC. | intangibles ip The durable asset is intellectual property accumulated since Qualcomm's founding "in 1985". The patents have "broad coverage in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and countries in Europe" and are licensed "to hundreds of companies on industry-accepted terms", with royalties set as "a percentage of the wholesale (i.e., licensee's) selling price... subject to per unit minimums and/or per unit caps". R&D of $9,042M equalled 20% of revenues. Manufacturing is fabless "other than for certain of our RFFE modules and RF filter products", for which Qualcomm owns fabs in Germany and Singapore. | intangibles ip The filing locates the advantage in a patent and know-how estate, not in customer lock-in or cost. Intellectual Property describes "an expansive, multi-layered IP estate" whose platform claims cover mRNA chemistry, sequence optimization, engineering elements, LNP delivery systems and "innovative processes for the manufacture and analysis of mRNA drug substance and formulated drug product," alongside "substantial proprietary know-how associated with related manufacturing processes" and a trademark portfolio of at least 1,400 registrations. Nothing in the filing claims switching costs or a cost advantage; Item 1A says the opposite, that competitors leverage "larger supply chains and greater purchasing power." |
| Leadership | co leader Counterpoint has MediaTek ahead of every rival in all ten quarters of its public table -- 31% against Qualcomm's 23% and Apple's 19% in Q2 2026 -- but that count covers smartphone application processors only, and MediaTek's 2Q26 remarks put mobile phone at 41% of group revenue, no longer its largest business. Smart Edge Platforms is larger at 53%, and while the remarks claim 'continued market share gains across connectivity, computing and automotive products', no independent count of those positions appears in the sources used here. In data center MediaTek holds nothing yet: production of its first AI accelerator ASIC is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026, and 15% to 20% is a 2027 target raised from 10% to 15% a quarter earlier. Inside its core market the flagship tier is a stated plan rather than a claimed position -- a 2nm SoC launching in the third quarter and, 'together with ongoing engagements with global players, we will increase our presence continuously in the flagship smartphone market in 2027' -- while Counterpoint records MediaTek's premium-tier shipments declining on a 'slowdown in sales of Dimensity 9000 series powered devices.' | co leader Leadership is clear in licensing and contested in silicon. The 10-K names no rival licensing programme and asserts the portfolio is "the most widely and extensively licensed in the industry", while calling QCT's industries "intensely competitive" and naming eleven competitors (Broadcom, HiSilicon, MediaTek, Mobileye, Nvidia, NXP, Qorvo, Samsung, Skyworks, TI, UNISOC); "continue to be a leader in mobile" appears in a list of things future success depends on, so it reads as aspiration, not share. The band therefore rests on the licensing leg, roughly 13% of revenue. FY2025 10%-plus customers were 21%, 20% and 13%; in 9M FY2026 only two cleared 10%. | co leader The Business section opens with the company's own claim that "Moderna is a pioneer and leader in the field of mRNA medicine." The Competition section frames the commercial reality more narrowly as a contest against a small named set: "We largely compete against Pfizer and BioNTech for sales of our COVID vaccines, whose vaccine is also based on mRNA technology. We also compete against other vaccines, including Sanofi and Novavax's." It does not claim a rank anywhere, and it places Moderna behind in the other approved category: in RSV "we compete against Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, who entered the U.S. market prior to us, and our RSV sales have been minimal to date." |
| Pricing power | moderate The 2Q26 remarks describe price as cost pass-through rather than capture: 'As rising costs across the supply chain have become an industry-wide reality, we are taking pricing actions to ensure these increases are appropriately reflected in our product pricing', with the full-year aim, 'through our disciplined pricing strategy', to 'deliver our full year gross margin within the current quarter guidance range' -- holding a band, not widening it. The realised figures show that defence working: gross margin 46.2%, down 0.1 percentage points sequentially, with Q3 guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 points. The 2.9-point year-over-year decline is not an erosion rate; the company states it 'was mainly due to a one-time benefit in the year-ago quarter.' Holding a mid-40s gross margin through a market the company expects to decline 'by about 15% in units this year' is genuine discipline, but passing rising costs through to defend a guided band is not the ability to price above it. | moderate QTL margins held at 72% in FY2025 and 73% in 9M FY2026, though Q3 FY2026 alone slipped to 69% from 71%, and the $111M revenue gain there is attributed to revenues per unit "primarily driven by favorable mix" rather than to price. At QCT, the fall to 26% from 30% is explained by "lower gross margin, primarily driven by higher product cost, partially offset by higher average selling prices" plus lower revenues, so the pressure is cost rather than price; FY2025 handsets rose $2,930M, of which $2.5B came from higher revenue per chipset. Against that, "declining average selling prices" is a standing risk-factor title, "particularly pronounced in emerging regions and China". | weak Item 1A states that "certain U.S. private vaccine market practices, including regarding discounts, rebates and returns, may cause us to realize significantly lower revenues than list prices," and that "in some instances, our competitors have been able to offer more attractive terms than we can, and they may continue to do so in the future." On the flu candidate it says that in a well-developed market Moderna "may need to offer more favorable terms to gain market share (which we may be unable to do), which may negatively impact our profitability." The Commercial section adds that its markets are "characterized, particularly in the U.S. (our largest market), by a fragmented end customer base, unpredictability in orders and seasonality of deliveries." |
| Summary | MediaTek is the largest supplier of smartphone application processors by units and has been for as long as Counterpoint's public quarterly table runs. Across all ten quarters it covers, Q1 2024 through Q2 2026, MediaTek is first every time and never below 31%, while the nearest rival never clears 30%; in Q2 2026 it holds 31% against Qualcomm's 23%, Apple's 19%, UNISOC's 13%, Samsung's 9% and HiSilicon's 5%. That is a real, independently counted position, and it is the only part of MediaTek's business for which such a count exists in the sources used here. The same table is the clearest evidence that the position is being defended rather than extended. MediaTek's share moves inside a 31% to 41% band across the ten quarters, and the top of that band has come down -- 41% in Q1 2024, 38% in Q1 2025, 33% in Q1 2026 -- while the 31% of Q2 2026 matches the lows already set in Q4 2024 and Q4 2025 rather than breaking them; measured like for like against the same quarter a year earlier the series runs 34%, 36%, 31%. Counterpoint records MediaTek's shipments falling more than 30% year-over-year in the quarter -- hit in the mainstream and entry tiers by the memory shortage, and in the premium tier by a slowdown in Dimensity 9000 series devices -- while Samsung's Exynos climbed to 9% on Galaxy S26 base variants and mid-tier A-series wins. MediaTek's own 2Q26 remarks show the gross line holding and the operating line not: gross margin of 46.2%, down 0.1 percentage points sequentially and guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 for the third quarter, against operating income down 22.2% year-over-year on revenue up 1.2%, with operating expenses of NT$47.4 billion against NT$44.5 billion a year earlier. Unit leadership held while the return on it did not. What MediaTek re-uses is design IP. It manufactures nothing itself -- the remarks describe deep design-technology co-optimization with TSMC and close work with advanced-packaging partners -- and they locate the durable asset in a pre-validated library of memory, I/O and connectivity subsystems, 448G SerDes with a Co-Package Copper system solution, CPO development on TSMC's COUPE platform, and an end-to-end 3.5D platform. The spending behind that library is visible in the cost line: operating expenses of NT$47.4 billion in the quarter against NT$44.5 billion a year earlier, with the Q3 operating expense ratio guided at 31% plus or minus 2 points against a gross margin guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 -- an operating cost base running near a third of revenue. That library is now pointed at two adjacencies. Smart Edge Platforms -- connectivity, computing, automotive and TV SoCs -- is now the larger business, at 53% of revenue in Q2 against mobile's 41%, and grew 26% year-over-year while mobile fell 20%. And the company says it has built its first AI accelerator ASIC for a major US cloud customer, with production scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026. One adjacency is a target and one is a contribution, and this profile treats them as exactly that. The data center share figure of 15% to 20% is a 2027 target against a served market MediaTek itself sizes at US$80 billion, raised from 10% to 15% only one quarter earlier, and production of the first ASIC was still scheduled for the fourth quarter at the date of the remarks. The RTX Spark AI PC work is corroborated by NVIDIA's own announcement, which credits MediaTek with collaborating on the custom CPU design and contributing to its power efficiency, performance and connectivity -- but the superchip, its Grace CPU, its NVLink-C2C interconnect and its software stack are NVIDIA's, and the systems ship from PC makers, so what MediaTek holds is a design contribution rather than a franchise with a share to count. The claimed share gains in connectivity, computing and automotive carry no number and no third-party count. The honest reading is a company with one durable, independently verified franchise it is holding rather than extending, funding a credible but still unproven move into higher-value silicon on the strength of its IP portfolio. | Qualcomm has two legs pointing in opposite directions. QTL (FY2025 revenue $5,582M, EBT margin 72%) rests on a portfolio the 10-K calls "the most widely and extensively licensed in the industry", with royalties struck on the licensee's wholesale device price under per-unit minimums and caps; its durability is dated in the filing, since "our patent license agreements with key OEMs are generally long-term, with terms expiring at varying dates between fiscal 2027 and 2031", some with binding-arbitration renewal clauses, and Huawei's licence has already expired, removing its royalties from QTL revenue from Q2 FY2025. QCT ($38,367M, 87% of segment revenue) is the leg under pressure: its three 10%-plus customers all build their own silicon, Apple already ships its own modem, and QCT EBT margin fell to 26% in Q3 FY2026 from 30%. | Moderna's 10-K rests its competitive case on the mRNA platform and the IP wrapped around it: the company states it believes its capabilities "across mRNA technology, drug discovery, development and manufacturing" differentiate it, and reports more than 260 issued or allowed U.S. patents or applications, more than 140 granted or allowed abroad, 485 pending applications, and granted patents on Spikevax, mNEXSPIKE and mRESVIA projected to expire in 2041 (U.S.) and 2036 (Europe), plus trade secrets and manufacturing know-how it calls substantial. The filing is equally direct about the limits: the principal COVID rival's vaccine "is also based on mRNA technology"; a competitor's European Commission contract keeps Moderna out of many European COVID markets until year-end 2026; RSV sales are "minimal to date" behind Pfizer and GSK; and the risk factors warn that "the mRNA medicines field is growing rapidly, with increased competitive pressure from large and more established pharmaceutical companies." What is durable is science and plant rather than commercial position: Moderna bought and operates the Norwood (MTC) campus, completed a Marlborough site purpose-built for intismeran autogene that began shipping patient batches in September 2025, and runs UK, Canada and Australia facilities that were fully licensed in 2025, each government having entered a multi-year commitment to purchase mRNA products from the company. |
| Chain position | A fabless designer sitting between its customers and the TSMC-centred manufacturing chain. The 2Q26 remarks describe 'deep design-technology co-optimization (DTCO) with TSMC' and close work with advanced-packaging partners to build 'high-performance ASICs across a broad range of very-large chip sizes using CoWoS and EMIB-T technologies' at nodes down to 2nm, and say MediaTek creates 'significant value beyond semiconductor by orchestrating other key components throughout the supply chain such as memory and substrate' -- a coordinator role as much as a design one. | Every figure and quotation is drawn from the FY2025 10-K and the Q3 FY2026 10-Q. Where the filings state no market share, the share band is left unknown rather than inferred, and barrier bands follow the filings' own language, which states a barrier to entry only for automotive. | A vertically integrated mRNA developer-manufacturer that sits between upstream licensors and government or retail buyers: it in-licenses the Penn modified-mRNA patents non-exclusively through Cellscript and mRNA RiboTherapeutics at low-single-digit royalties and NIAID's prefusion coronavirus spike and prefusion RSV F patents, manufactures drug substance at the owned Norwood MTC campus and individualized therapy at Marlborough, runs Moderna-built plants in the UK, Canada and Australia against multi-year government purchase commitments, and relies on CMOs for critical raw material production and fill-finish. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.05 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. |