NVIDIA and Intel gaining marketshare in smartphone chip market

Strategy Analytics reports the smartphone chip market doubled over the past year, it's now worth $1.68 billion. Qualcomm remained the leader in Q1 2011, followed by Texas Instruments, Samsung, Marvell, and NVIDIA. It's interesting to see that NVIDIA is now in the top five, and while the report doesn't go into the specifics, it also mentions that Intel's baseband business more than doubled between over the past year.

I'm a little surprised to see Nvidia in the top five given the fact that so few smartphones actually use its Tegra SoCs. The green team nabbed a few design wins recently, though, and I can't really think of another company that might slot into fifth place. Strategy Analytics' press release provides little in the way or raw numbers, so it's hard to know whether Nvidia just squeezed into the top five or if it's aggressively climbing the ladder. I can't help but wonder if the analysts are simply counting processor shipments and not sorting out those meant for tablets.

Source: The Tech Report