Never mind which group is generally more technically oriented: if most current Android phones don't even manage to match the iPhone 1 fluidity, it doesn't matter if the CPU is 40% or not.
OMAP4 & SGX540
- Thread starter roninja
- Start date
D
Deleted member 13524
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So first you say that commenting about the technical orientation of buyers is ignorant and then you proceed to make your own based-on-a-hunch statistics?
If you're the one making up the numbers then it's not ignorant anymore?
Even if the people who buy iphones actually are more "technically oriented" than the average android user, that's an awfully unfair comparison because Android covers almost all price points whereas the iphones are all expensive.
If you take the people who spend >500€/$600 or 180€+contract on smartphones, I bet the Android wins hands-down on tech-savvy proportions.
TI pulling out of handheld business?
http://www.zdnet.com/texas-instruments-lessens-focus-on-mobile-devices-7000004815/
There were rumours some months back that the omap division was up for sale.
Strangely this comes at a time when omap4 is getting some good design wins, including the Barnes and noble tablets just announced.
The announcement must put in some doubt any chance of them implementing their rogue license, I.e will there even be an omap6 ?
http://www.zdnet.com/texas-instruments-lessens-focus-on-mobile-devices-7000004815/
There were rumours some months back that the omap division was up for sale.
Strangely this comes at a time when omap4 is getting some good design wins, including the Barnes and noble tablets just announced.
The announcement must put in some doubt any chance of them implementing their rogue license, I.e will there even be an omap6 ?
I'm not surprised to be honest. With Qualcomm investing heavily into UMC, continuing the battle wouldn't had been easy. As for their roadmap - since they are apparently just switching focus - it might slow down but it's not like they'll be able to serve the automotive market with OMAP4 & 5 forever.
They are "reprofiling" away from tablets and smartphones. Sounds to me like they are getting out of the tablet and smartphone business, segments where one of the primary drivers is graphics/video performance, and refocusing on embedded, a segment that doesn't scream graphics/video as a priority to me.
"In terms of the OMAP roadmap, again, what I would say is that we've got, I believe, tremendous capability with our OMAP 5 product, it's a dual core processor. We've got lots of design-ins with that processor. It's a 28-nanometer implementation of a dual A15 device that is very well positioned in terms of power and performance. And it's made its way into a number of embedded applications. The roadmap that follows as we go through that, you start to talk about devices tailored for more of those embedded applications, and we tend to be agnostic. Is it 1 core? Is it 2 cores? Is it 4 cores? What else is in that chip and how else is it balanced with graphics capability and DSP, et cetera, et cetera? Ultimately, the needs of the markets will define the chip level implementations. But again, the orientation will be for those decisions on those roadmap items to be more focused on the embedded market than on the smartphone market."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/888511-texas-instruments-inc-shareholder-analyst-call?page=1
"In terms of the OMAP roadmap, again, what I would say is that we've got, I believe, tremendous capability with our OMAP 5 product, it's a dual core processor. We've got lots of design-ins with that processor. It's a 28-nanometer implementation of a dual A15 device that is very well positioned in terms of power and performance. And it's made its way into a number of embedded applications. The roadmap that follows as we go through that, you start to talk about devices tailored for more of those embedded applications, and we tend to be agnostic. Is it 1 core? Is it 2 cores? Is it 4 cores? What else is in that chip and how else is it balanced with graphics capability and DSP, et cetera, et cetera? Ultimately, the needs of the markets will define the chip level implementations. But again, the orientation will be for those decisions on those roadmap items to be more focused on the embedded market than on the smartphone market."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/888511-texas-instruments-inc-shareholder-analyst-call?page=1
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I'm working on the basis that omap4 and omap5 were first and foremost designed and targetted at smartphones and handsets. They have said that these markets are no longer there prime target markets for future soc designs. One can draw a conclusion that future designs are no longer best optimised for smartphones and tablets, and therefore much less likely to get design wins when competing against other socs that have complete focus on those sectors, and TI seem comfortable enough with that position.
One could just as easily draw a conclusion that TI have identified some new slower rate markets and they want to go after those in parallel. The transcript says exactly that, that there's a separate $4B business to go after as well in an area they want to start focusing on.
That could also very well mean different chips and thus not necessarily jeopardising smartphone and tablet designs. TI already do that today with non-OMAP tape-outs (as does Qualcomm and Fujitsu and Freescale and.....)
That could also very well mean different chips and thus not necessarily jeopardising smartphone and tablet designs. TI already do that today with non-OMAP tape-outs (as does Qualcomm and Fujitsu and Freescale and.....)
I hear what you are saying, but the entire tone of the transcript that I linked to above was far from "we are still going full steam ahead with smartphones and tablets but feel embedded is yet another great opportunity", and some of their quotes would tend to suggest otherwise:-
"If you think about our traditional focus in wireless and you think about where we've been focused historically in terms of the smartphone and tablet markets, I guess what I would describe to you is that we believe that, that opportunity is less attractive as we move forward."
(me), they see a smartphone business which is forecast to 1.7B units by around 2016 as being a less attractive opportunity ??? its not cause of the market size, its cause they don't feel they can get a share of it, and are therefore moving resources away from it to an area they feel they can get a share of.
"We've got numbers of the OMAP 4 family, our initial OMAP 5 device that we've been working on design ins. We will support all of those customers regardless of what they're building. Really, the most important thing is when you start to think about where we're putting our R&D dollars moving forward, the new products that we're developing. We're going to shift our -- we are shifting. You already see existence proofs of this. We're shifting our investments to those products being developed for the embedded market.
So if you're a customer today in one of those markets and you're using the existing TI product, we are going to support those customers, no confusion about that whatsoever"
(me) SHIFTING investment, not extra investment. The fact that they feel the need to state that they'll continue to support existing omap4 & 5 historic customers says plenty about their ambitions going forward.
"So should we expect to see a dip in OMAP revenues over the next 12 to 18 months as you go through that transition"
"Yes. I mean I think if you look at the numbers, we shift our focus, we have existing business at existing customers that we're not going to be investing in the roadmaps to the same degree
http://seekingalpha.com/article/888511-texas-instruments-inc-shareholder-analyst-call?part=single
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aaronspink
Veteran
from their perspective it probably is. The two largest vendors are fully in house with their chips. The rest of the market has a heavy concentration of players competing primarily on price.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
I'm sure the ROM modding community will cry a river over this.
Despite the underpowered GPUs (see NOTE), all the modders out there seem to love TI chips for the excellent documentation and open-source drivers, in contrast to Tegra and Exynos. Updated AOSP/AOKP ROMs just seem to get rock-solid releases a lot faster for OMAP devices than anything else.
NOTE: yeah, I still think a SGX540 for first-gen OMAP4 was a really bad choice and one that represented a very poor forecast on how graphics became important for smartphones and tablets. The same could be said for the SGX530 in 2nd-gen OMAP3, OMAP36xx. Just my opinion, though.
Despite the underpowered GPUs (see NOTE), all the modders out there seem to love TI chips for the excellent documentation and open-source drivers, in contrast to Tegra and Exynos. Updated AOSP/AOKP ROMs just seem to get rock-solid releases a lot faster for OMAP devices than anything else.
NOTE: yeah, I still think a SGX540 for first-gen OMAP4 was a really bad choice and one that represented a very poor forecast on how graphics became important for smartphones and tablets. The same could be said for the SGX530 in 2nd-gen OMAP3, OMAP36xx. Just my opinion, though.
I'm biased, but 540 at ~300MHz and ~380MHz was very well judged for the target market and compared to its immediate competitors. OMAP4 still has legs.
tangey, I guess we get to see how it shakes out in the wash. It's a difficult market to play in but the market is still there and addressable by players other than Samsung.
EDIT: personal opinion only for me with regards to this stuff
tangey, I guess we get to see how it shakes out in the wash. It's a difficult market to play in but the market is still there and addressable by players other than Samsung.
EDIT: personal opinion only for me with regards to this stuff
I might be wrong but I have the impression that OMAP3 sold more than well for its time. For OMAP4 while I realize that they're all manufactured on 45nm, I would had preferred myself a higher frequency especially for the 544 in 4470. The dumb part from our user perspective is that we don't and can't know the exact power characteristics of each SoC and what would or wouldn't be possible for each individual case.
TI faced problems with manufacturing at Samsung, since the latter gave priority to Apple and went to UMC. For TI to be able to decently compete in the more cutthroat smartphone market, they'd need a foundry that can deliver when they need to. And all of the sudden other rumors appear: http://news.techeye.net/chips/qualcomm-tipped-to-invest-in-umc If it's true wouldn't someone easily suggest that with such an investment Qualcomm would primarily be seeking for priority?
No idea if any of it is true or if it has any connection to their change of strategy, but I could sense some sort of frustration lately from TI's higher management.
Wellington
Newcomer
The AP business is becoming more increasingly more difficult to compete in and TTM is the key here. In my view, both TI and STE have failed here - The products they have available today just can't compete with devices coming from Samsung, Qualcomm, NVidia etc. (I'm talking about devices that are generally available).
TI have a stake in embedded , so makes sense to focus on an area where they already have good market penetration.
TI have a stake in embedded , so makes sense to focus on an area where they already have good market penetration.
ltcommander.data
Regular
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/...tphone-tablet-omap-processor-activity-report/
So apparently Amazon is in talks to buy TI's mobile processor division. Is there really a clear enough delineation of technology/personnel that Amazon could take the smartphone/tablet processor sections and TI can continue embedded processor development?
So apparently Amazon is in talks to buy TI's mobile processor division. Is there really a clear enough delineation of technology/personnel that Amazon could take the smartphone/tablet processor sections and TI can continue embedded processor development?
Nothing of the sort unfortunately as it seems:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012...sinstruments-jobcuts.html?ref=technology&_r=0