Strategy Analytics has claimed that 20% of smartphones sold last year
had dual-core processors in them, with Samsung leading the pack. The
research firm says that Samsung led the dual-core smartphone
applications processor market in 2011, with 60 percent volume share,
followed by Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and NVIDIA. Interestingly
enough, the research firm attributes the strong market position of
Samsung to sales of its dual-core processor to Apple (several Apple
products use Samsung’s processors) as well as the brisk sales of its own
dual-core Android smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S II and the
Galaxy Note.
As for emerging leaders in the quad-core processor market (which
right now is currently NVIDIA), Sravan Kundojjala, Senior Analyst, had
this to say: “Strategy Analytics would advise NVIDIA to focus on high
volume tier-one design-wins in 2012 in order to maintain its first-mover
advantage with quad-core processors. NVIDIA, whose Tegra 2 smartphone
shipments declined 8 percent at the end of 2011–compared to shipments in
the first half of the year– lost momentum, despite being early to
market with dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processors.”
Source: Strategy Analytics
