Global and China Mobile Application Processor Industry Report, 2009-2010

Global and China Mobile Application Processor Industry Report, 2009-2010 ; The so-called mobile application processor is centered on a variety of particular applications such as algorithm, graphic processing, 3D formation, MPEG-4/H.264 decoding and full-featured internet surfing. As an application processor focused on mobile products, it can be installed inside with a Modem for mobile communication. In its applied products, mobile application processor serves as a core or an assisted processor.

By application fields, it falls into four categories, i.e., smartphone, non-smart phone, IVI (In-vehicle Infotainment) system and others (including MID e-book and Smartbook). Or it also can be simply divided into two major classes-ARM core and X86 core. The fact that application processor sector involves huge investment capital makes it a "game" for only a small number of enterprises.

In the future, smart phones will still be the main markets for mobile application processor, while its application in non-smart phone industry will slump. A case in point is the three leading Korean enterprises Mtekvision, Corelogic and Telechips involving in non-smart phone industry, which were without exception hardly hit in 2009. In terms of revenue, Mtekvision saw a decrease by 21%, which marked its first loss; Telechips also saw a drop by 19%, slightly hit thanks to its wide range of product lines; but Corelogic, the worst inflicted firm, suffered from huge losses and would go bankruptcy if it refused to transform.

As such, SH-Mobile of Renesas got dampened miserably. SH-Mobile failed to go outside Japan. There is no development room for SH-Mobile since Japanese mobile phone market has been excessively saturated. Moreover, Renesas has long been teaming up with DoCoMo to jointly develop and promote its products. However, its third-generation SH-Mobile encountered difficulty in promotion, because fully integrated IC like QSD8250 by Qualcomm has been favored by the growing number of manufacturers. As for the 4th-generation SH-Mobile, it is hard to predict its development in the future.

Concerning OMAP, there is not much to worry about, but it is not optimistic, either, owning that its VIP client Nokia has not performed well yet in smartphone field. 3G Modem is excluded in OMAP processor and it is not preferably employed by Nokia. The CPU of main Nokia models in 2010 is RAPUYAMA jointly developed with Freescale. And OMAP has become the second choice for star types of Nokia mobile phone.

By contrast, SANPDRAGON from Qualcomm has gained wide acceptance by nearly all leading mobile phone manufacturers. Qualcomm will further enhance the performance of its QSD8672-the hot chip for Smartphone in 2011 and 2012. As for Samsung, it will continue its third place in application processor industry thanks to its big buyer-Apple. The application processors of Samsung have not been adopted by Apple IPAD but will be employed by Apple's IPHONE. The latest series of Samsung-S3C6410 and S5PV210 are both powerful products.

When it comes to Marvell, it worked hard to expand product lines in 2009 and rolled out 10 models or so of new products. Therefore, Marvell deserves closer attention in the future. Nevertheless, Marvell has only one big customer-RIM in mobile phone industry.

In 2009, mobile application processor market expanded further, in which the three emerging markets consist of Smartbook, IVI system and e-book.

Smartbook is a kind of product with function between netbook and smartphone, and it renders the smartphone-based CPU and small operating system. The operation of smartbook will be supported by such CPU as Nvidia Tegra and Qualcomm Snapdragon. Smartbook can be defined as an electronic device always online and being centered on network applications; with screen size between 5-10 inches and ARM's CPU. The biggest difference with netbook is that its always-on-line feature and ARM-core CPU instead of using the CPU with X86 structure. It seems that Smartbook tends to impact traditional netbook market. Yet, its algorithmic performance falls far short of Intel's N270, but the prices of the two are so close. Other demerits of Smartbook lie in its poor portability and longer start-up time in comparison with Smartphone. In addition, IPAD of Apple is the competitive rival of Smartbook. The reason why Lenovo postponed the launch of its first Smartbook into market is to avoid the strike from IPAD.

It is expected that Smartbook will feature small screen sized between 6-10 inches so as to widen the market difference with netbook, with the final selling price below US$200. Therefore, smartbook will enjoy a relatively big market. As is estimated, the market scale will reach 50 million sets optimistically or 25 million sets in a conservative way in 2015. It is expected that the market size will be 8 million sets in 2010.

Another market of mobile application processor is IVI system. At present, 3D navigation made its debut in the navigator market. Similarly, IVI also needs to process network media videos like H.264. So, it requires powerful algorithm performance and 3D graphic processing capacities. As yet, Intel's ATOM has gained Benz and BMW, and Nvidia's Tegra2 has occupied Audi. Moreover, Volkswagen Group is expected to employ Nvidia's Tegra2 to its product portfolio.

In 2009, the e-book market grew 178% to 3 million sets from a year earlier. In 2010, the global e-book market is expected to realize 7.7 million sets. The core chip of e-book system is the application processor of ARM base, whose suppliers are mainly composed of Freescale, Samsung and Marvell. In 2010, TI set foot in this market.

As the AP supplier of the best-selling e-books of Kindle 2 and Kindle DX, Freescale has boasted of a market share of over 70%. As for Marvell, it tended to turn a new page by launching AMADA 166E in 2009. While Samsung seek market expansion with low-price strategy. And TI widened its application range of OMAP3430.