14 DAY TRIAL // ABI Research says in a new report that Intel, Marvell, MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Nvidia all announced their first 64-bit mobile processors at Mobile World Congress this year, mainly because of Apple and its A7 chip inside the iPhone 5s.
While many people called Apple’s A7 a marketing gimmick – referring to its 64-bit capabilities – the Cupertino giant is well on its way to actually leverage this specification in future iPhones and iPads. Whereas Android vendors are just beginning to scratch the surface.
ABI says in a press release that “64-bit-compliant smartphones are unlikely to hit the market before the release of the next Android update, expected in the second half of the year.”
The firm expects that by the end of 2014, shipments of 64-bit mobile processors will surpass 182 million units. But there’s a catch: of this huge number, only 20% will represent Android devices. Worse still, it won’t mean anything in terms of performance.
“With the introduction of A7, Apple has once again shaken the whole mobile industry, forcing chipset suppliers and device vendors to make 64-bit chips a high priority in their roadmaps,” says ABI.
“A number of early adopters will initially use 64-bit as a catchy marketing strategy to easily communicate differentiation using ‘more-is-better’ adage previously used for promoting performance in the multi-core processor race,” remarked Malik Saadi, practice director at ABI Research.
“This is not to say that 64-bit processing will not add any significant value to the Android sphere but the benefits of this technology will become apparent only when its implementation over Android matures,” added Saadi.
So as Apple goes and launches its second generation of smartphones with 64-bit processors, Android is only just beginning to use the specification without any real-world performance improvements.
To some, this could signal Android’s decline, but that’s unlikely to happen. What will happen is Apple will get to keep a faithful customer base – which knows value when it sees it –, while the likes of Samsung will continue to try and play catch with the Cupertino giant, using every possible advertising gimmick to look like a winner in the eyes of the public.
All this while Apple continues to face accusations like stagnating innovation, falling market share, poor demand for the newest iPhones, all because Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. Well, we’ve waited this long. What’s a few more months?