Understanding the handheld chipset market - Part 1

[Arun]

<a href="http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/handheldpt2/"><img border="1" src="http://www.beyond3d.com/includes/images.php?id=236" align="right" width="75" height="75"></a>Beyond3D is about more than just super-hot graphics chips that can make you toast. It's also about various other chips that can't - and that includes the handheld chipsets you can find in your mobile phones, PDAs and various other digital gadgets. These chips are often between one and two orders of magnitude smaller than those in PCs, and need much less than one watt of power. So, unsurprisingly, they are also quite different to design!

This week, we'll be looking at the business and marketing side of things, and what goes into the first phases of the decision making process - basically, why the chips out there are what they are, and how you can judge for yourself how competitive they seem to be, based on a small number of factors - excluding the engineering side of things, which we'll touch upon next week. So, <a href="http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/handheldpt1/">let's take a look</a> at the various dynamics taking place in the market.

[Simon F]

Hmm... Nice opening paragraph...introducing the two leaders in the handheld market.:???:

[Arun]

Hmm... Nice opening paragraph...introducing the two leaders in the handheld market.:???:Heh, I knew I was going to get some complaints for my selection of companies, both on the first page and in the rest of the article :)

So let me just quickly explain my reasoning here - first of all, I wanted this article to be media-centric, not 3D-centric. Img Tech certainly also have some interesting things in terms of video and DVB-H etc., but I am not under the impression that they are the category leader there (I'd love to be proved wrong, though, ofc).

Secondly, the introduction is aimed at explaining people why we are even writing anything on this, considering Beyond3D never focused much on handhelds (on the webpage, that is - not the forums), and that this isn't even about the 3D part of things. So, considering the two companies we traditionally focus on the most are NVIDIA and ATI/AMD, it made sense to begin insisting on how much they were trying to grow in that domain, as one of the several reasons why we are writing something on this subject.

And finally, Part II of the article is going to take a few specific examples to illustrate some points. I just took the examples I personally understood the best, and that I thought would show the most constrast. So, I did what I could not to be biased there, but I can see how some may wish to disagree - that's your prerogative, of course.

And of course, once we'll do a 3D-focused article on the handheld industry, you would expect PowerVR and Imagination Technologies in general to get a pretty big focus. I'm not sure yet how we'll present that article and what we'll focus on, but I'll figure out something soon enough! ;)

Anyhow, I hope this made the situation clearer.


Uttar

[Lazy8s]

The article states that most of the semiconductor companies in the space are fabless with TI and Samsung being the only exceptions, but between them and other major players like Renesas and NXP (Philips), which also have their own fabs, exists much of the total market.

[Arun]

The article states that most of the semiconductor companies in the space are fabless with TI and Samsung being the only exceptions, but between them and other major players like Renesas and NXP (Philips), which also have their own fabs, exists much of the total market.I just rechecked that, and you are indeed correct - sorry about that. To my defense, however, both Renesas and NXP also outsource to TSMC.

The percentages of outsourcing are not public though; so it's hard to judge how far or near both are from being fabless, although I'd suspect they do at least a small majority of things in-house, and possibly more. This is also why, when I checked (at least for Renesas), I didn't realize they weren't fabless, since I could find agreements with TSMC via Google - oops! We'll correct the article Real Soon(TM).


Uttar

[Patric]

Can't wait for part 2 :grin:

[Geo]

Hmm... Nice opening paragraph...introducing the two leaders in the handheld market.:???:

/me imagines Simon kicking his dog while muttering "3rd para!" under his breath.

[Nelsieus]

This is great, Uttar! :smile:

It really highlights an area becoming ever more prevalent, especially among the GPU world.

As mentioned above, I can't wait for part 2.

Nelsieus