Telecom Lead America: Chip major Qualcomm leads the
smartphone applications processor market with 44 percent revenue share in Q1
2012.
The global smartphone applications processor market grew
55 percent year-over-year in Q1 2012 reaching $2.47 billion, according to
Strategy Analytics.
Besides Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Broadcom
and MediaTek are the other top players in the smartphone applications processor
market in Q1 2012.
Marvell dropped out of the top-five.
Marvell’s TD-SCDMA smartphone applications processor
shipments at China Mobile were not sufficient to offset its declining shipments
at Research in Motion.
Broadcom continues to execute its smartphone processor
strategy well and grew thanks to its high-volume Android smartphone design-wins
at Samsung.
MediaTek, for the first time, featured in the list of
top-five smartphone applications processor vendors on the strength of its strong
momentum in the sub-$200 smartphone segment in China and other growth markets.
ST-Ericsson rebounded strongly as the company’s
smartphone applications processor revenues registered over 600 percent
sequential growth in Q1 2012 thanks to its Nova and NovaThor-branded chips.
Stand-alone applications processors continue to gain
share and accounted for 44 percent of total smartphone applications processors
shipped in Q1 2012, up from 39 percent in Q1 2011.
Sravan Kundojjala, senior analyst of Strategy Analytics,
said Qualcomm maintained its lead in the smartphone applications processor
market in Q1 2012, but its revenue share dropped to 44 percent in Q1 2012 from
51 percent in Q1 2011, as a result of intense competition from Broadcom and
MediaTek in the low-end Android smartphone market.
Strategy Analytics believes that Broadcom and MediaTek
are emerging as credible threats to Qualcomm with their baseband-integrated
applications processor strategy.
Despite its strong momentum in the tablet applications processor
market, NVIDIA’s market share in smartphone apps processors continues to
stagnate at 2 percent since Q1 2011. NVIDIA will continue to miss the large
addressable market until it introduces baseband-integrated applications
processors.
