A recent research report from Strategy Analytics shows that the smartphone applications processor market grew by 58% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2012, reaching $3.8 billion. App processors are the main chip in a smartphone.
Qualcomm was estimated to have a 42% revenue share of the smartphone applications processor market in Q3 2012, followed by Samsung with 27% (helped by shipments of Apple and Samsung handsets) and MediaTek (12%) in third place.
Broadcom was fourth and ST-Ericsson moved up into fifth place, helped by the appearance of its dual-core NovaThor processors in Sony and Samsung devices. Texas Instruments was pushed out of the top five listing for the first time.
Intel, which has proved popular with PC and laptop manufacturers, had just 0.2% revenue share in the smartphone applications processor market.
Sravan Kundojjala, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said “Qualcomm’s 28 nm-based LTE Snapdragon processors have helped Qualcomm to widen its technology lead over competitors. However, Qualcomm faced increased competition in the crucial Android ecosystem from integrated processor vendors including Broadcom, MediaTek, Spreadtrum and ST-Ericsson in Q3 2012. Strategy Analytics estimates that Qualcomm’s share in the Android ecosystem dropped from over 60 percent in early 2011 to about 35 percent in Q3 2012. Strategy Analytics believes that Qualcomm still has plenty of room for growth in future quarters despite increasing competition as less than 50 percent of Qualcomm's chipsets are smartphone applications processors.”
[Report]