Chinese manufacturer MediaTek is known for its affordable quad-core chipsets that are used in several low cost smartphones around the world. But the company is now looking to make a big entry into the top-end market with the launch of its new MT6595 octa-core chipset.

Unlike most MediaTek chipsets, which are limited to smartphones from Asia and Europe, this new chipset could also make its way to the U.S. as it supports 4G LTE — a prerequisite for any new high-end smartphone entering the American market.

Similar to Samsung’s Exynos 5420 and 5410 octa-core chipsets, the MediaTek MT6595 will be based on the ARM “big.LITTLE” architecture. This chipset switches between four Cortex-A17 cores (up to 2.5 GHz) and four Cortex-A7 cores (1.7 GHz) based on the requirements of the device.

Needless to say, this new chipset will compete directly with the likes of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800/805 chipsets — as well as Samsung’s own Exynos octa-core chipsets. The launch of this new chipset is welcome news for us mobile geeks as we can now expect more manufacturers to launch high-performance, low-cost handsets around the world, including the U.S.

• ViaEngadget