Chip maker Qualcomm reported its quarterly earnings this week, and the company did pretty well for itself, pulling in 39 percent more revenut than the same quarter a year earlier. But even more interesting (for tablet enthusiasts anyway) is news that there are more than 20 different tablets in the works which may ship with Qualcomm chips.
While the company isn’t putting out a list of devices, we already know that the Asus Eee Pad MeMo 7 inch tablet will feature a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, while the Lenovo LePad will have a 1.3 GHz Qualcomm chip. So that’s two down, 18 to go. It’s worth keeping in mind that Qualcomm is only saying the tablets are “in development” though, which means some may never make it to market.
Still, at a time when it seems like NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 processor is taking over the tablet world, it’s good to see Qualcomm plans to give NVIDIA a run for its money in the space. And of course, Apple is expected to continue cranking out its own ARM-based chips for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad models.
Yes ,I also think it’s wholly possible that there is only room in the market for a few devices.
At what point do we reach tablet saturation? The buying public has only so much room for tablets….both want and afford….even in the $250 dollar range(which there are very few decent tablets if any) you only have a finite market…..100 different tablets today=10 different tablets in a year IMO
Device makers are hoping that tablets have the same kind of appeal that PCs or smartphones do. While there may only be room for a couple of major software platforms, there are hundreds of PCs and at least as many phones available for purchase.
It remains to be seen whether consumers will flock to tablets in the same way though. It’s wholly possible that there is only room in the market for a few devices, but it’s a new market and it’s tough to say with any certainty what it will look like in a few years.