The Snapdragon-Android axis really does have a shot at being the “new Wintel” - in the third quarter of this year, 17 devices based on this combination launched from 11 vendors, and of commercially available Android devices, as of August, 44 were based on Qualcomm silicon and nine on that of competitors.
Snapdragon uses Qualcomm's own-designed ARM core, Scorpion, which is more heavily focused on multimedia performance than vanilla ARMs. It had a head start in the market for gigahertz processors (though Nvidia has beat it to dual-core with Tegra 2), and the efforts to optimize Android performance on the processor have paid dividends.
However, Snapdragon will have tougher challenges going forward. Enrico Salvatori, SVP and general manager of Qualcomm Europe, reiterated that the 1.5GHz Snapdragon, and the dual-core version, would appear in devices in the first quarter and first half of 2011 respectively.
But in the same timeframe, there will be several rivals this time around - Tegra 2, the dual-core high end OMAP from Texas Instruments, Samsung Orion, and of course the wild card, Intel Atom.
If Qualcomm and Google want to be the new Wintel, the real Intel is still searching for its new Microsoft. Nokia is the best candidate, as the two firms promote their jointly owned operating system, MeeGo.
Qualcomm was quiet about Nokia, a surprising contrast to last year, when it was fresh from announcing the end of legal hostilities and a customer deal with the market leader.
Nokia had been expected to launch a Qualcomm based handset this summer. In various slides listing its high level OS partners, Symbian appeared on the margins of just one, even though Qualcomm is a member of the Symbian Foundation and Salvatori claimed the relationship with Nokia was still strong.
But there is increasing suspicion that the expected Snapdragon-based Nokia phone will not appear this year (and perhaps, in light of Intel and MeeGo, never).
However, Qualcomm is more interested in the other Nokia OS, MeeGo. Chandhok said this was an "interesting concept" though there was nothing to announce as yet.
Original Article URL: