The global smartphone and tablet applications processor market rose by 50% and 52% during the first quarter of 2013 to $3.6bn and $740m respectively, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics.
During the quarter, the smartphone app processor market was led by Qualcomm with 49% revenue share, followed by Apple and Samsung with 13% and 12% share respectively.
Strategy Analytics senior analyst Sravan Kundojjala said that Qualcomm’s performance during the quarter was mainly supported by the rising demand for stand-alone APQ-series applications processor shipments.
"The Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T) has served Qualcomm well and the upcoming Snapdragon 800 family of chips will likely help further," Kundojjala said.
The tablet applications processor market was led by Apple, Texas Instruments (TI), Samsung, NVIDIA and Intel, with Apple maintaining the lead with 40% market share, followed by TI and Samsung with 13% and 10% share respectively.
According to Kundojjala, the Chinese and Taiwanese tablet chip firms together captured 29% volume share in the tablet applications processor market during the quarter.
"Among these companies, MediaTek made significant progress with the help of design-wins at Acer, Asus and Lenovo and is well-positioned to grab double-digit share in non-iPad tablets this year," Kundojjala added.
Content from our partners
The research firm reported that Samsung’s in-house customer Samsung Mobile boosted tablet applications processor shipments during the quarter, which had a five-fold growth.
Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service director Stuart Robinson said: "However, Samsung is likely to come under pressure from external suppliers such as Intel and Marvell who scored mass-market tablet design-wins at Samsung Mobile recently."
