14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to mobile chips Intel, Samsung and Qualcomm are well known for their offerings, but interestingly enough these processor-makers aren't the ones selling the most chips when it comes to tablets.
The first part of the answer won’t come as a shock, with Apple now dominating the processor space when tablets are concerned. But the runner up will certainly surprise you, it’s not Intel or Samsung or Qualcomm, but relatively unknown low-cost ARM-based chip manufacturer hailing from China, Allwinner.
Liliputing reports that according to IDC Allwinner has managed to ship a whopping 18 million tablet chips in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Puzzling enough, this is 3 times as much as Intel has managed to push onto the market. So it makes sense we're seeing more and more non-brand vendors offering tablets sporting the Intel architecture, as the chip giant is avidly trying to push its products in order to keep up with the competition.
More than that, Intel appears to be trailing behind another low-cost chip maker from China, namely Rockchip, while Qualcomm comes in only on the third position.
Apple will, of course, continue to dominate the high-end tablet market, but Allwinner has managed to create a niche for itself by taking advantage of the budding demand in the low tablet market.
Usually tablets sporting Allwinner chips are on the low-side of the spectrum and while Apple doesn't sell its slates cheap, it would be pretty difficult to find an Allwinner tablet with a rate larger than $299 / €214.
For example, yesterday we told you about HP launching the 7 Plus 1301 and 7.1 budget tablets in Europe and both come sporting Allwinner processors. They are to be sold with a price-tag revolving around the €100 / $139.
Of course, customers picking up Allwinner tablets should know they can’t expect the same level of performance as they would normally get from slates supporting the Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm or Intel platform.
Even tablets coming out of white-box vendors equipped with Intel chips tend to offer better than average specifications, but still manage to sell for acceptable price-tags. Intel has been rumored to be working on really affordable, under $100 / €72, tablets for a while now, but we’re yet to see such models arrive in retail.
It’s not just Allwinner gaining ground, but other low-cost players like Rockchip and MediaTek that recently introduced octa-core chips and have upcoming ARM v8 64-bit processor in the pipe-line.
Bottom line is budget chips aren't horrible chips anymore, they just don’t offer the same level of performance, for now. As things advance in the chip industry we might be witnessing a change in dogma.