Date: 21/01/2011

Mulitcore processors as market differentiators for smartphone makers

With smartphones handling the data and communication processing tasks as complex as latest advanced desktop computers, the mobile phone designers are opting for muticore to improve the speed of response when phone user is doing multitasking with his portable device.

The increasing number of application such as gaming, media players and business application demand more than single core in the main processor to complete the data processing faster.

Market researcher Strategy Analytics notes over the next few years multi-core processors are expected to play an important role in enabling high-performance mobile computing at low-power consumption. According to Strategy Analytics the multi-core processor penetration in Smartphones to hit 15 % in 2011 and to 45 % in 2015.

"ARM's Cortex-A9, Cortex-A5 and Cortex-A15 and Intel's x86 architectures will contribute to the proliferation of multi-core processors in smartphones," noted Stuart Robinson, Director of the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service.
Samsung, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments are rated as best semiconductor chip vendors who can deliver multi-core processors.

"Strategy Analytics analysts believe that multi-core processors will re-ignite the battle between the stand-alone and baseband-integrated applications processor vendors in 2011," commented, Sravan Kundojjala, Senior Analyst. "The baseband-integrated multi-core applications processors will account for about one-third of total smartphone multi-core applications processor shipments in 2011, with potential for higher share in the future. By contrast, the market for single-core apps processors is now dominated by baseband-integrated products."