Posted on Sunday, June 15 2008 @ 1:15 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
NVIDIA's Mobile Business division general manager Michael Rayfield
told eWeek that he sees the mobile Internet devices (MID) markeet as a "zero billion dollar market". The market is still undefined but Rayfield believes the market of $200 to $250 MID device market could become pretty huge.
In an interview at Nvidia’s headquarters here, Rayfield – not surprisingly – believes that the ARM-based Tegra platform will offer the type of battery life needed for MIDs to be successful in the market while supporting video, games and “light” productivity applications such as email and spreadsheets.
“If the device is only works for two hours, it will remain a zero billion market because nobody wants to plug it back into the wall after two hours,” said Rayfield.
This type of platform with the ARM processor also means that Nvidia can move between the MID and the smartphone markets – the company offered a its APX2500 application processor for smartphones earlier this year – and that type of crossover could lead to an array of interesting products that combine the best elements of both.
“It’s a mart that could be worth billions and billion and there could also be billions of devices out there if it’s done right,” said Rayfield. “If the smartphone starts to merge with the navigation device, which then starts to merge with these mobile devices, it becomes huge.”
Some analysts agree with that assumption and many believe that it will take Intel some time to bring the thermal envelope of its Atom processors down for use in both MIDs as well as smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone.
