In 2007, the South Korean giant did not even rank in the top 10 in handset IC sales, according to IHS.
By last year(2012), Samsung held firm to the No. 2 spot, capturing 21 percent of all handset core IC revenue, according to the IHS report.
Paradigm shift
The rise of smartphones and 4G LTE have created “paradigm shifts that transformed competition” in the market for mobile handset core ICs.IHS defines the cellphone core IC market as including chips that provide mobile handsets with wireless wide-area-networking (WWAN) communication and application-processing capabilities. The market segments include handset core ICs for analog baseband, digital baseband, power amplifiers, radio and intermediate frequencies, high-level operating systems and software processors, and other multimedia or graphics coprocessors.
ARM(Advanced RISC Machines) are heterogenous processor or SOC. It hosta an embedded processor for user interface, for web browsing and a general purpose DSP with highly – power efficient data path accelerator for multi-media executions. These heteogenous processor chips more commonly known as SOC enable a long lasting multi-media experience without drawing on mobile’s limited battery. If this is not ensured smart phones would not gain in popularlity and would not become a common place device as a personal hub for present and future needs.
Today most sophisticated heat management techniques are being used so that at peak power consumption it remains within maximum temperature permitted. Improved energy per application function and lower leakage power have to be coupled with architecture innovation in IC Design. These architecture innovation can be multi-core or asymmetric multi-core. Te reduce the peak power in the mobile set a number of functions are outsourced to the cloud computing.
Ubiquitous android in the mobile world
Google Android will be to the next decade what Microsoft Windows was to the 1990s.It will be the software platform that will enable many of the most interesting and diverse devices to merge in electronics.For decades, the industry has sought— usually in vain — a common base of free, open-source software.The 1980s saw the quest for a unified Unix for computers.More recently, the search was for a single version of mobile and embedded Linux to power everything from mainstream smartphones, tablets and connected TVs to systems on the factory floor.Google’s Android has come closer than anything in the past to fulfilling the dream.As ARM(Advanced RISC{Reduced Instruction Set Computer} Machines)-based processors strengthen their processing punch,Android will emerge as an operating system for notebooks , PCs and mobile sets.In smartphones, Android has already surpassed Apple’s iOS and other alternatives in shipments.Its broad support among handset makers is its best guarantee of a robust and long life for use in all systems.Google’s recent work to merge tablet and smartphone variants in version 4.0, called Ice Cream Sandwich, has put the codebase on a solid footing, at least for the moment.AMD, Apple, Dell, Dialog, Freescale, Fujitsu, HP, LSI, Microsoft, Motorola, MStar, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments- these fabless companies are all licensing ARM cores for everything from smartphones to tablets to basestations to servers.The truth is that even though ARM is gaining market share in low-power embedded applications the company still has a long way to go to challenge the perennial microprocessor king-INTEL.Intel in particular has a 20-year head start over ARM, resulting in a maturity, sophistication and veneration that will be hard to displace by a 12-year-old ARM.
