When Tsai Ming-kai walks into the conference room, it is hard not to feel a slight sense of disappointment. The kindly 60-year-old hardly looks like the ominous-sounding “King of the Bandit Phones” – an epithet that Taiwan’s easily excitable press has given the chairman and chief executive of Mediatek, the biggest supplier of mobile phone chips to China.
The exaggerated descriptions the press assigns Mr Tsai (which also include “King of Stocks” and “Godfather of Taiwan chip design”) stem partly from the fact that Mr Tsai is rarely seen in public. His appearances are limited to a handful of speeches every year and even the company’s quarterly results conference calls are handled by Yu Mingto, the chief financial officer.
Indeed, this is Mr Tsai’s first face-to-face interview with the press in three years – it was nearly derailed by a small crisis the night before when his public relations manager was unable to inform him in advance that a photographer would be present.