The worldwide market for processors jumps by 24% thanks to mobile devices
PC sales continue to slump unlike the global markets for mobile devices that expand every day
It appears that the forecast for tablets and smartphones to replace the PC might become reality. According to the latest market research by HIS, the global market for processors went up by 24% this year as shipments reach 1.5 billion units that is about 300 million more units compared to last year’s results. Usually it has always been the PC that fuelled those processor numbers, however PC sales continue to slump globally unlike the global markets for smartphones and tablets that expand every day.
Gerry Xu, the senior analyst of IHS processor research claims that the growth of the micro-processors segment has slowed in the PC market; however the mobile platforms are what keep the overall processor market healthy. In fact, during this year the processor shipments for PC platforms have dropped down from 89.9 million to 84.3 million units. To compare the numbers correctly, for the same amount of time, processor shipments for smartphones have grown up from 147.9 million to 204.2 million units, while for tablet devices those numbers have grown from 38.3 million to 53.5 million units.
Meanwhile, the same report doesn’t ignore the huge impact of low-cost smart devices from China that significantly boost shipments of processors by MediaTek, Allwinner and Rockchip. After all of this being said, there’s no surprise that leading companies such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are pushing into the mobile devices market. According to the report, Intel controls 84% of the overall PC processor market and it is currently interested in using Atom platform in all PC, smartphones and tablets. The company believes that the Silvermont architecture will bring Atom chipsets next to the top based on ARM design chips in terms of energy efficiency and performance.
Meanwhile, it’s also no surprise why giants like Qualcomm are also pushing hard to develop next generation processors for mobile devices and others like MediaTek are already bragging with true octa-core processing. If the battle has been calm so far, these numbers might just predict the real storm coming.
Source: TechWeek
