TAIPEI -- Taiwan's MediaTek, the world's no.2 mobile chip provider after Qualcomm, said it would expand its footprint in the U.S. and seek growth beyond smartphones and China, its largest market in 2018.

The remarks by Rick Tsai, co-chief executive of MediaTek, came as the overall mobile market is slowing down substantially and smartphone shipments to China continue to decline.

"MediaTek is not only capable of developing chips for smartphones ... we have a wide range of technologies," said Tsai in a year-end media briefing on Wednesday. "We are seeing more than 20% growth this year for chips going into emerging products, including voice-activated smart speakers, bike-sharing systems, and other connected devices."

Tsai pledged to grow sales for chips for emerging connected devices and other customized projects to over 30% of the company's overall revenue in one to two years, from more than 20% now. Currently, the mobile chip business still accounts for the largest chunk of around 40% of company sales.

MediaTek is also seeking to diversify from China-based customers and plans to supply to other international clients, said Tsai. Apple is reportedly considering purchasing modem chips for iPhones from MediaTek to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm, as the two U.S. companies have been in a prolonged legal battle since January.

Tsai declined to comment on Apple but said his company will increase investment in the U.S., a market in which it still has little presence, and hire more people there. MediaTek currently has a team of over 600 staff there and most of them are top research and development engineers, according to Tsai. The company employs a total of around 16,000.

The Taiwanese chip designer supplies to almost all major Chinese smartphone makers such as Huawei Technologies, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Meizu, Gionee, and also Samsung Electronics' mid- to low-end phones. MediaTek is also a key chip supplier for Amazon Echo Dot, the popular smart voice-activated speaker, and a similar product, Tianmao Jingling, offered by Alibaba Group Holding.

MediaTek is embracing the boom in voice-assistant connected devices, said Jerry Yu, head of MediaTek's home entertainment business group.

Yu said his company currently controls more than 70% of the chips that to go into smart speakers, while this year the overall shipment for such products reached over 30 million units worldwide.

"For 2018, we are seeing at least double-digit growth in voice-activated speakers, and we continue to see voice-assistant features go into more products including TVs and home appliances," said Yu.

Co-Chief Executive Tsai said his company has engaged with manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in the most advanced 7-nanometer process technology across the industry for at least three chip projects. He did not specify what kind of chips they are but analysts said it's likely to be high-end mobile processor chips and modems.

Global leaders such as Apple and Qualcomm will both adopt TSMC's 7-nanometer technology in 2018 for their next generation of core processor chips to go into iPhones and premium Android phones.

MediaTek lost some market share to its biggest competitor Qualcomm and will see its first sales decline this year since 2011. Qualcomm controls some 35% of the global market share in smartphone application processors, while MediaTek and China's Spreadtrum Communications control some 25% and 11% respectively in 2017, according to Roger Sheng, an analyst at research company Gartner.

"For 2018, we don't think the smartphone market would grow much. The Chinese market is fully saturated. We will only see growth from emerging markets," said Sheng.

T.L. Lee, head of MediaTek's wireless communication unit, also said mid-December that smartphone growth will mainly come from markets like India, and countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

In terms of shipment volumes, for 2018, there should be no growth for the Chinese market, said Lee, as Chinese consumers tend to only buy new handsets to replace old ones, as opposed to owning additional smartphones.