Nvidia Tegra 3

Huang Jen-Hsun, Nvidia’s co-founder and CEO, predicts tablets will outperform mobile PCs five years from today, echoing a similar sentiment from UK fabless chip maker ARM Holdings. The Tegra revenue could even surpass Nvidia’s GPU business, he tells chatting with reporters at a Computex press conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The CEO dismissed Intel’s latest mobile strides by expressing pessimism about their re-newed focus on tablet and smartphone silicon. Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes quoted Jen-Hsun as saying that “consumers do not care whether their products use x86- or ARM-based processor”, adding:

As for the impact bring by the tablet PC, Huang pointed out that PC and tablet PC each has its own unique functionality; therefore, the traditional notebook should not see any danger of being replaced. However, netbook, which does not have a full functionality as a traditional PC, is being impacted deeply by tablet PC.

Nvidia, of course, is betting big on ARM-branded processor designs (versus Intel’s desktop x86 and mobile Atom architectures) that dominate the smartphone industry and are slowly but surely becoming a norm in the tablet space. Tegra chips typically combine ARM processing cores and Nvidia’s custom graphics cores. Even the iPad’s A5 chip is custom-designed around ARM’s CPU blueprints and the graphics unit licensed from Imagination Technologies. Nvidia’s technology roadmap is pretty convincing and they’ve been working their way up the mobile chain. The company is set to become the leading silicon provider for mobile gadgets…

Asus yesterday unveiled the Eee Pad Slider, a gadget designed around Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip.

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Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of graphics giant Nvidia, sees Android-driven tablets powered by his company’s speedy processors overtaking Apple’s iPad in about the same time-frame it took Android smartphones to beat the iPhone, he told Reuters:

The Android phone took only two and a half years to achieve the momentum that we’re talking about. I would expect the same thing on Honeycomb tablets.

The comment is a 180-degree turn from Huang’s previous analysis which blamed lackluster sales of Android tablets on the lack of software richness, sub-par marketing and high price points, to name a few. A Jefferies analysis (see tablet below the fold) echoes this sentiment, conceding that a small percentage of users are currently considering buying an Android tablet over iPad. Nevertheless, Android tablets are expected to catch up next year, the survey notes.

If Android slates are to zoom past Apple’s device, Huang now argues, more apps are needed, especially high-quality games and entertainment titles. He suggested that Android vendors iterate Honeycomb devices using Nvidia’s next-generation Tegra processor code-named Kal-El. Plugged-in sources describe the chip as a screamer…

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