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After making a strong impact in the smartphone segment, chip maker Qualcomm is now placing big bets on the tablet market, investing heavily in research and development (R&D) activities.
"We are investing heavily into tablet PCs, smart TVs and we expect a significant pipeline of devices in the next few months. The tab market will be significant for us," Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Anand Chandrasekher told PTI.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors power more than 850 mobile devices, including Sony Xperia Tablet Z, Lenovo IdeaTab S2110 and Dell XPS 10. It works with almost all leading smartphone players including Samsung, HTC, Nokia and Blackberry.
Without divulging details, Chandrasekher said the company is "investing heavily" in introducing products that help tablets perform at high speed and multitask without compromising on battery life.
"The upcoming 800 version will be used in both tablets and smartphones. While we are yet to announce our tablet plans, I can tell you that we are heavily investing in this space," he said.
Earlier this year, Qualcomm had announced the launch of its Snapdragon 600 and 800 chips for high-end phones, tablets and smart TVs, which would be available later in the year.
The company claims the new chips can deliver 40% better performance than its predecessor, Snapdragon S4. Snapdragon S4 Pro chips are used in Nokia Lumia 920T, LG Optimus G, Asus Padfone 2, HTC J Butterfly, HTC Droid DNA and Nexus 4.
Qualcomm's competitors include NVidia, Intel and MediaTek.
Compared to shipment of 0.29 billion PCs in 2012, 0.7 billion smartphones and tablets were shipped globally.
While the PC shipments are expected to stay stable at 0.3 billion by 2016, shipment of smartphones and tablets are expected to zoom to 1.8 billion units.
Similarly, semiconductor revenues from PCs stood at $ 51 billion, while that from smartphones and tablets was at $68 billion in 2012.
"This number is expected to grow to $90 billion by 2016, compared to $56 billion for PCs. We want to grab a significant portion of these revenues," he said.
The company already has a significant play in the smartphone arena and will extend it to the tablet space as well, Chandrasekher added.
However, the company is also cautious about the new platform.
"We have not built the revenue component into the forecasts because customers (OEMs) have started shipping devices. They need to ship specific volume for us to do that," he said adding that there will be a paradigm shift in computing with tablets.
