The tablet applications processor market reached $0.9bn, a 77% year-on-year increase across the globe in the third quarter of 2012, according to a report by Strategy Analytics.
A mobile application processor is a system on a chip (SoC) designed to support applications running in a mobile operating system environment.
A mobile application processor provides a self-contained operating environment that delivers all system capabilities needed to support a device’s applications, including memory management, graphics processing and multimedia decoding.
According to the report, entitled ‘Handset Component Technologies’, NVIDIA holds the lead with one-third of the market share in the non-iPad tablets segment, while Apple, with 53% of the revenue share, tops the field.
Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service senior analyst Sravan Kundojjala said that NVIDIA gained with the help of its Google Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface RT design-wins. "During the quarter, NVIDIA registered its highest quarterly Tegra tablet processor shipments since the introduction of the Tegra product," Sravan said.
Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service director Stuart Robinson said that according to his firm’s estimates, stand-alone applications processors represented about 99% of all tablet applications processors shipped in Q3 2012.
"Baseband-integrated processors have had limited traction so far in tablets and this has affected shipments of integrated vendors such as Qualcomm, Broadcom and MediaTek," Stuart added.
The report revealed that NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Samsung secured the positions of the top-five vendors in the tablet applications processor market.
