It's Official: nVidia to get out of the smartphone market. Good move?

Remake without poll, left side of op is cut off.

Edited: For full visibility.

nVidia embarked on with the release of the Tegra back in 2008 with hopes on making it big in the smartphone market is finally coming to an end. The $376 million dollar purchase of Icera back in 2011 so they can incorporate LTE in their Tegra SoC's so they can offer the full package by combining their Tegra with LTE tech in hopes of big players like Samsung, LG and others in the Smartphone market of choosing Tegra over Qualcomms and other chips is finally coming to an end. Not that $376 million is going to hurt nVidia in any way IMO as they are flush with cash, I am a bit surprised. I expected nVidia to fully clash heads with Qualcomm and I am surprised that they admitted defeat like TI with getting out of the Smartphone market by no longer producing their OMAP chips for smartphones or Broadcom quitting.

I will admit I was a bit surprised as I don't see them as quitters especially since Jen Hsun was proclaiming how big the smartphone market would be (and rightly so) and that nVidia needed to be at the forefront. I see as nVidia as company that doesn't easily admit defeat, I mean they have been at it for nearly 10 years now, I mean afterall this is nVidia we are talking about a company that helped destroyed 3DFX, Matrox, PowerVR, intel, 3D Labs, Rendition, as well as host of other companies to become a top player in the Graphics market.

Anyone surprised?

Meanwhile intel is heading in the opposite direction going full force in the smartphone and tablet market with the release of Atom X3 which has full integrated LTE support even though they lost 4.2 billion last year in their mobile division on top the $10 - 12 billion dollar they lost. Very interesting to see two companies going in the opposite direction.

So, good move on nVidia's part? To me I don't know why they would quit I mean Tegra X1 is a pretty powerful chip, they surely could make better use of it other than putting it in the Shield and Automobile infotainment systems. This only leaves Qualcomm and Mediatek as two independent providers of SoC's for the smartphone market. I guess we now know who won the smartphone chip wars which is eerily similar to what happened with the GPU wars with also only 2 players remaining with nVidia and ATI (now AMD) as the two last players remaining.

No, the last major smartphone with a Tegra chip was the Tegra 4 edition of Xiaomi's Mi3 smartphone that launched in 2013.

Tegra X1 is a relatively power hungry SoC that was not designed with phones in mind. There will be future Tegra SoC's, just none of them will come with NVIDIA's in-house modems. I think this should be made quite clear as not to create any confusion. NVIDIA or another manufacturer can still pair a Tegra SoC with a modem from a company like Qualcomm or Intel.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. There are a number of key players in the smartphone SoC market, such as Samsung, Intel, Rockchip (Intel's partner for Atom X3 / SoFiA), Broadcom, Huawei, etc.

By independent meaning they design their chips to supply to 3rd party phone makers. Not like Apple who design their own ARM processors to be used on their iPhones and only rely Qualcomm for their baseband chips. They don't have the entire package at least as of right now. And yes I was going to go back and add other's like intel which I also mentioned (it's not allowing me to edit my initial thread) but in any case in terms of market share these are the two big boys in LTE basebands. I guess the better analogy would be like ATI and nVidia as the two big boys in the discrete market shortly after market consolidation of Discrete GPUs in the early 2000's, 3DFX went kaput but the two major players were ATI and nVidia sure there were Matrox and some smaller makers but these two were the dominant players. I guess I am trying to get at is that we are seeing that repeat with respect to the SoCs with Qualcomm and Mediatek being the two major independent players with rest fighting for scraps. This was what I was alluding to with my Graphics market analogy in my OP.

Not really true. There was talk about it being in high end smartphones. I guess nVidia decided to pull the plug on any plans. They didn't even have a booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (unlike in previous years). Looks like they are not interested. And yes there will be future Tegra SoC's as I made clear with the focus on products like Automobiles and future Shield products as I mentioned in OP.

This is what I read on all tech sites too.

I think the rest is misinformation.

Nvidia Looking To Sell Icera In Q2 2016 from Tom's Hardware

Believe me, if Nvidia was going to leave the smartphone market, would be headline in every tech site...

edit: From Anandtech too: NVIDIA Plans To Wind Down Icera Modem Operations In 2016

When have you seen smartphone last time with Nvidia GPU? long time ago, companies just tend to go with either Mali or Adreno

1 year ago.

LG G2 mini LTE D625

Well companies that create mobile chips usually doesn't offer only smartphone solutions or only tablet solutions.

And Nvidia has a rock solid place in tablet market with one of the greatest design wins, Nexus 9.

As long as Google will keep using them in their mobile devices, only a stupid would leave the market...

GPU Rankings are based on the parameters are evaluated, synthesized from notebookcheck, androidauthority with tools GFXBench, 3DMark, AnTuTu Benchmark.

1. Qualcomm Adreno 430
2. NVIDIA GeForce Tegra K1
3. PowerVR GX6450
4. Qualcomm Adreno 420
5. ARM Mali-T760
6. PowerVR G6430
7. Qualcomm Adreno 330
8. PowerVR G6200
9. ARM Mali-T628
10. PowerVR GSX 544 MP4
11. ARM Mali-T604
12. NVIDIA GeForce Tegra 4
13. PowerVR SGX543 MP4
14. Qualcomm Adreno 320
15. PowerVR SGX543 MP2
16. PowerVR SGX545
17. PowerVR SGX544
18. Qualcomm Adreno 305
19. Qualcomm Adreno 225
20. ARM Mali-400 MP4
21. NVIDIA GeForce ULP (Tegra 3)
22. Broadcom VideoCore IV
23. Qualcomm Adreno 220
24. ARM Mali-400 MP2
25. NVIDIA GeForce ULP (Tegra 2)
26. PowerVR GSX540
27. Qualcomm Adreno 205
28. Qualcomm Adreno 203
29. PowerVR 531
30. Qualcomm Adreno 200

Nothing wrong with Nvidia as GPU for smartphones but I guess other companies tend for lower prices for their chips.

@PredatorRules:

Qualcomm Adreno 430 is build in 20nm.

NVIDIA GeForce Tegra K1 is build in 28nm.

NVIDIA GeForce Tegra X1 already destroys with ease the Adreno 430, at the same 20nm.

Now that Nvidia will have Samsung's 14nm FinFet fabs for the next Tegra (probably with Pascal architecture and maybe with Maxwell too), their competitors will lose the fab advantage.

Also we all see how much they lowered the power consumption for performance with Maxwell.

We will probably see the same with Pascall and 3D Memory.

And its nowhere near in GPU department:

I only see a bright future for Nvidia's mobile department, when I look at facts...

ps: I highly doubt that list that it suppose to say the "best" GPU, cause in the best and most advanced benchmark for mobiles, the Ice Storm, Adreno 430 is slower than K1's Kepler GPU...

But in a mobile department they might take 2D performance aswell...

edit: I found very good benchmarks of adreno 430 that shows its graphics score at Ice Storm. X1 Maxwell aswell..

@Coseniath again, nothing wrong with Nvidia, but I'm sure they charge more than other companies like Qualcomm; I still don't see Samsung Galaxy S series, nore LG G series or even Apple's Iphone S series or Sony Z series with Nvidia GPUs, usually leading brands choose the best they can for their top of the line products or should I say series.

considering nobody is really using tegra.... unsurprising

Well I don't know how much they charge each company for each chip...

But neither Adreno 430 would be in any flagship, Samsung S series nor even Apple's. Just one phone from LG (from the companies you said).

Its currently only at LG G Flex 2 and one phone from HTC. So Qualcomm isn't in such a superior position either despite they have superior fabrication atm and as you said better prices (although I might disagree on this, you prolly confuse Nvidia with overpriced chips from Intel).

Sony:

Z2 - Adreno 330

Z3 - Adreno 330

Z4 - Adreno 430

Samsung:

S4 - PowerVR SGX544MP3

S5 - Adreno 330

S6 - Mali-T760MP8

Note 3 - Adreno 330 (N9005, N9002)/ Mali-T628 MP6 (N9000)

Note 4 - Adreno 420 (SM-N910S) Mali-T760 (SM-N910C)

LG:

G2 - Adreno 330

G3 - Adreno 330

HTC:

M8 - Adreno 330

M9 - Adreno 430

From what I see lots of companies tend to go with Qualcomm Snapdragon GPUs for their leading series, I guess they have far better deals or maybe many developers already used to it?

EDIT: shouldn't this topic belong to the mobile forum? I see it irrelevent discussing all of this stuff on PC forum, I know we're talking about Nvidia GPUs but stil..

We were talking about both companies latest products (Nvidia's and Qualcomm's).

What are all these?

PowerVR is from Imagination Technologies. And Mali is produced by ARM.

And you also refered to old Adreno GPUs...

And the only product you refered after the HTC M9 which I already mentioned, is Sony Z4 which isn't released yet...

Well i'm mentioning GPU modules that companies chose for their leading smartphones series.

None of em' chose to go with Nvidia, I do know that Nvidia GPUs for smartphones are excellent, I've seen some graphics demonstrations myself, about half a year ago there was another topic about that on this forum with vids.

It looked like the next unreal mobile game is coming for the smartphones with the new Nvidia abilities for smartphones, shame nobody using them, I would bet big companies in gaming industry like Asus would use their chips.

I think it was a major news because it shows that there may and I emphasize may be a strong indication that they are not willing to play the smartphone game going forward. It may be hard to convince 3rd party phone makers to use their chips if they don't have the "entire package" which includes their in-house modems, this is not a problem for cheap Asian makers but it may be for nVidia if their target is high end phones. Interestingly intel is going in the opposite direction with integrating their chips with their modems for the smartphone market and going all out.

Also, the market is reacting badly too after they announced that it will cost them $100 - $150 million dollars related to employee termination, severance package, also other issues related to their Tegra/Icera division. Stock is down nearly 10%, that's almost the biggest drop I have seen in nearly 6 -7 years since the financial collapse in 2008/2009.

Granted this is not going to hurt them much as their stock is relatively high but $360 million for the purchase of Icera plus $100 - $150 million. That's almost $500 million dollar blunder!

Actually Qualcomm is a very dominant player in the Smartphone market (bigger than nVidia). Also, Tegra will not be found in Apple anytime soon, as I believe Apple has a stake in Imagination Technologies plus they design their own ARM processors and Samsung looks like is heading in their direction with their Exynos SoC's at the expense of Qualcomm. Their are even rumors of LG going in that direction.

You are right here.

It's Nvidia's fault for not releasing a lower competitive model for smartphones.

@Xtasy26 said:

I think it was a major news because it shows that there may and I emphasize may be a strong indication that they are not willing to play the smartphone game going forward. It may be hard to convince 3rd party phone makers to use their chips if they don't have the "entire package" which includes their in-house modems, this is not a problem for cheap Asian makers but it may be for nVidia if their target is high end phones. Interestingly intel is going in the opposite direction with integrating their chips with their modems for the smartphone market and going all out.

Also, the market is reacting badly too after they announced that it will cost them $100 - $150 million dollars related to employee termination, severance package, also other issues related to their Tegra/Icera division. Stock is down nearly 10%, that's almost the biggest drop I have seen in nearly 6 -7 years since the financial collapse in 2008/2009.

Granted this is not going to hurt them much as their stock is relatively high but $360 million for the purchase of Icera plus $100 - $150 million. That's almost $500 million dollar blunder!

Everytime that a company announce that they sell something, loses momentary asset value.

It's a normal reaction.

It would be strange if they wouldn't lose anything...

Qualcomm is a tech giant comparable only with Intel and Samsung. Nvidia is nowhere near them. Nvidia is like 10 times smaller company.

But Qualcomm lately lost a lot of contracts cause of the bad design of Snapdragon 810 (as you can see only 2 flagship and 1 that we don't have even an ETA) and the Adreno 430.

Their previous Snapdragons were in the majority of flagships.

The only reason Nvidia is trying to compete here is because of their advantage of tech knowledge.

Imagination Technologies is somewhat complicated. You would laugh, but the shareholders are Intel, Apple and Saad Group. lol

Apple and Samsung design their own ARM CPUs (Axx and Exynos) and they just have a contract with Imagination Technologies and Qualcomm for their GPUs.

If Nvidia provides great performance/watt in their GPU and they want to sell just GPUs or if they can make a great SoC, Apple and Samsung will consider adding them to their smartphones.

Both companies in the past have changed CPUs/GPUs/SoCs etc etc, when there was a better offer. Because in the end, all companies have one goal, profit.

The movement of going 14nm finfet in Samsung's fabs, might provide them (Nvidia) what they need in order to compete...

Agree with you there. But it does show that investors were caught by surprise that they would sell that division as it was an important part in providing the LTE basebands so that they could provide the "complete" package to compete with the likes of Qualcomm and what not. Hence the dumping of the stock.

You are right they did lose contracts especially with Samsung that cost them tens of millions. Agree with you about if nVidia were to provide great performance/watt in their GPU they can sell their Tegra chips (I mean their Tegra chips is still great) but I have to take issue with Apple all of a sudden using Tegra for their iphones. I don't see them happening anytime soon. Apple is deeply entrenched in making their ARM A series processors and using Imagination Tech IP for their iPhones. Even if nVidia were to beat them Apple will update it their A series and match them with better PowerVR GPU and put it in the next iPhone. Apple doesn't have to put the best performance ARM processor and GPU to sell their iPhones. Since the release of the Tegra in 2008 Apple hasn't switched over and I don't see them doing it anytime soon. They have even hired AMD engineers to work on their mobile processors. So the chance of them using nVidia is extremely unlikely. They haven't used them in the past 7 years. Don't see them using Tegra for their phones in the next 10 years especially now they are deeply entrenched in their own processors design.

I see the same thing with Samsung with their in house Exynos mobile chips going forward. They are making significant investments in their own SoCs.

Maybe nVidia realized all of these and started to through in the towl.

@Xtasy26: I agree with most things apart from a few.

Nvidia became competitive with only 2 chips. Back with Tegra 3 and now with K1. And soon with X1.

All of them have something in common. They are not designed for smartphones due to their power requirement.

Also all Nvidia's competitive chips have won Google Nexus designs (Nexus 7 - Tegra 3 and Nexus 9 - K1). Which are major wins for any company.

I think the next Nexus tablet will have X1 too but I can't remember where I read it. (With this huge performance jump while lowering power consumption it should be obvious.)

So I don't see anywhere near throwing the towl cause they couldn't make progress in their own modem buisness and they have to buy from third party the modems for their next SoC...

Actually this was a good move cause their modems weren't as good as the competition and now they will lose a small percentage of earnings per SoC but they will be more competitive.

You are right about that. I believe even Apple used Tegra 3 as one of their benchmarks to state that how much more powerful their SoC in the iphone 5 (I believe). By throwing in the towel I was referring to Smartphones. No where I mentioned Tablets for which I expect nVidia to be very successful along with Car infotainment systems. Although many tablets will have LTE support but I guess those LTE modems will be from other manufacturers.

Bottom line, I just think that nVidia realized that they weren't making much in roads in the smartphone business as you stated they had only one smartphone with Tegra 4i with LTE support LG G2 mini LTE D625 over the past year, as far as I know. But without LTE I just think it will be very difficult for them to get back into the smartphone business anytime soon then it already is hence me telling they threw in the towl. I just think nVidia quitting a business is not in their DNA, I expected them to fight tooth and nail for the smartphone market I mean they have been at it for 6+ years now but I guess the competition was too much and even every winners has to admit defeat sometimes. I just think when it comes to smartphones (other than the phone makers who design their won SoC's) it is going to become a two way horse race between Qualcomm and Mediatek with intel becoming the Wild Card as they are going out full force in the opposite direction as nVidia with their SoC's for smartphones.

What does intrigue me greatly is how far intel will go to take market share away from Qualcomm and Mediatek. They posted $4 billion dollar loss recently on top of the $12 - $16 billion dollar loss in their mobile division so around $20 billion so far! :0 Also, intel is also going after the tablet market too. The difference between them and nVidia is that nVidia came to the mobile market several years earlier, intel is playing catch up. They have been hiring engineers the last couple of years to double down on their SoC's to compete in the tablet and smartphone market (one of my buddies not too long ago got hired by intel to work on their SoC's). They are building chips now straight from the ground up specifically targeting smartphones and tablets. What does intrigue me is how long they can go with taking billions of dollars in losses with their SoC's. They are basically strong arming their way into the mobile market. Similar to the PC market 10+ years ago when intel was getting their a**** handed to them by AMD with their Athlon 64/X2/Opteron line of processors and intel was basically bribing PC makers and threatening them to use intel Pentium 4's in their PCs despite the Pentium 4 being inferior to AMD's Athlong 64/X2 and they later got in trouble for it. Since they can't do that now as they are being more scrutinized they are taking the losses up front. Question is how long their investors will tolerate it? Can't remember company taking $4 billion dollars losses in one of their divisions and continue on with it. Intel being dominant with their desktop/laptop/server processors is making up for the huge losses in their mobile division. If AMD's Zen is successful and AMD starts taking market share away those billion dollar losses may be harder to swallow. I hope AMD goes all out with their next CPUs and throws everything but the kitchen sink. Intel needs to be spanked for bribing PC makers back in the day and still making 10's of millions of dollars despite having inferior processors and engaging in shady dealing to undercut their competition .

It will be interesting going forward from 2016 and on wards.

@Xtasy26: Well, Intel is a company with $55Billion revenue and near $12Billion profit.

I think they don't have a problem to invest $4Billion for the mobile market. :P

And I think they will lose more and more the next years.

But they will eventually catch up...

You are right. The question how long are the willing to go to take the loss? It's not hurting them now. I am hoping the latter to happen. I would like to see intel take beat down from Qualcomm for all the dirty things they did back in the P4 days that hurt AMD.

Actually I didn't like that Qualcomm saw the very good job that was done by AMD in this department and they bought their Imageon development for a small amount...

Imagine if AMD still had Adreno product rights? Cause Qualcomm still uses the same architecture that was developed by AMD, the VLIW5 (AMD 6xxx series).

I hate those mobile companies that suddenly made a lot of money from the mobile department and they want to steal the glory and the profits from the true pioneers in chips which are Intel, AMD and Nvidia.

You are right. AMD was a fool by selling their Imageon group for chump change. That's was mostly under Dirk Meyer. AMD could have inside Galaxy S6! as well as a host of others. I guess now we know why Dirk was gone (or part of the reason).

Yeah. He is responsible for Bulldozer and the failure in the mobile market.

Report: AMD's Meyer fired over failure to target mobile devices

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