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