SAN FRANCISCO—Apple Inc. said a German court has ruled that a tablet computer made by Samsung Electronics Co. cannot be sold in most of the European Union, the latest turn in a patent fight between the two companies.

The preliminary injunction bars Samsung from distributing its Galaxy Tab 10.1 touchscreen tablet throughout most of Europe, with the exception of the Netherlands. The device, which was released earlier this summer and runs on Google Inc.’s Android operating system, is widely considered to be the most promising competitor to Apple’s iPad, which has dominated the market since its release last year.

Apple reiterated an earlier statement that Samsung had copied its products, and it intends to protect its intellectual property.

A spokesman for Samsung didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A German court representative declined to comment.

The ruling, which was earlier reported by Deutsche Presse-Agentur and the FOSS Patents blog, follows a similar injunction handed down by an Australian court.

In April, Apple sued Samsung in a California court, alleging the South Korean manufacturer infringed on its patents and “slavishly” copied its designs. Legal battles between the Cupertino, Calif., company and Samsung have circled the globe, with filings in various Asian and European countries, as well as the International Trade Commission.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC) wants to be a player in the European LTE infrastructure market.

The Korean vendor’s opening gambit will be a trial of its LTE gear at a multinational European operator later this year, and it’s hoping to win its first LTE commercial contract in Europe in 2012, an ambition the company revealed at the LTE World Summit in May. (See Samsung Expands Euro Activities .)

Samsung is actually on the European LTE device scene already, as it supplies USB dongles to TeliaSonera AB (Nasdaq: TLSN) and Vodafone Germany for their LTE services. But now, it wants to provide the network equipment too. (See TeliaSonera Beefs Up 4G Dongles and Vodafone Germany Gears Up for LTE .)

The company’s LTE infrastructure credentials include customer wins in the Asia/Pacific region, the Middle East and North America. These customers are KDDI Corp. , SK Telecom (Nasdaq: SKM), LG Telecom , Etihad Etisalat Co. (Mobily) , MetroPCS Inc. (NYSE: PCS) and Cellular South . (See SK Telecom Deploys Samsung LTE Network , LG U+ Launches Samsung LTE, KDDI Selects Samsung for Japanese LTE Build and CellSouth Taps Samsung for LTE.)

But why Europe and why now? Up to now, Samsung has not been able to compete in Europe because it did not support the GSM standard in its equipment. But now its multistandard base stations support not only GSM, but also LTE, WCDMA, WiMax and CDMA.

Some suggest that now is a good time to go after European operators for LTE contracts, even though many don’t even have the spectrum for it yet, because many operators are looking to refresh their radio access networks, as much GSM equipment is nearing end-of-life. As part of these network updates, operators want to add future support for LTE in any new base stations they deploy.

But what does Samsung have that established suppliers Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , Nokia Siemens Networks or Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) don’t? Everything, Samsung would argue — that is, everything from the chipset in the devices and systems to the equipment in the network. And this is what the company hopes will set it apart from other infrastructure vendors: being able to get devices and network equipment all from one supplier.

Other vendors have devices as well as network infrastructure in their arsenals, of course — Ericsson and NSN have Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), respectively. Huawei does both, too. But, arguably, their device and infrastructure businesses are not as integrated as Samsung’s. In January, Samsung combined its mobile device and telecoms systems divisions into one business unit, which is led by JK Shin, president of Samsung mobile communications.

“We have the complete package for mobile operators,” says IP Hong, vice president of marketing at Samsung’s telecom systems business, in an interview with Light Reading Mobile. “They need a new vendor in 4G [in Europe].”

But it won’t be easy going up against companies that have long histories with European carriers and thousands of employees in the region to support those operator customers. Samsung only established its LTE European outpost, located in Chertsey, U.K., in May.

The size of the challenge for Samsung in Europe, though, has not dampened the company’s ambition:

“We can change the situation in Europe,” Hong says. “We are ready to go.”

IDG News Service – AT&T Wireless and Samsung Mobile announced the thin and light Infuse 4G smartphone during a press event Thursday in New York.

The phone is 8.99 millimeters (0.35 inches) thick — a fraction thinner than Apple’s iPhone 4 — and has a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display, one of Samsung’s most advanced, said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president for devices at AT&T Wireless.

The device weighs 133 grams (4.7 ounces) and is powered by a single-core ARM processor running at 1.2GHz. It runs Google’s Android 2.2 OS and will go on sale in the U.S. on May 15, priced at $199 with a two-year wireless contract. It runs on AT&T’s HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access) network, which AT&T considers a 4G service.

The display shows more pixels than Samsung’s previous AMOLED smartphone screens offered on the AT&T network, Bradley said. Infuse also has an 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash.

It’s the latest addition to Samsung’s portfolio, which also includes the Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets. The new phone was previewed in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, where AT&T said it would introduce multiple 4G and Android devices this year.

Samsung and AT&T have partnered with mobile gaming company Rovio to include a special Angry Birds edition for the smartphone. There were no details about whether it will be sold overseas.

Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Tab, left, is displayed with at an advertising board, at the headquarters of South Korean mobile carrier KT in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 22, 2011.

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. says it sued Apple Inc. for patent rights violations, only days after Apple sued Samsung for the same reason.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. said it is suing Apple Inc. for patent rights violations, only days after Apple sued Samsung for the same reason.

Samsung is accusing Apple of violating its rights to 10 smartphone and computer patents. The company filed lawsuits Thursday in Seoul, Tokyo and Mannheim, Germany.

The lawsuits come only days after Apple sued Samsung in a California court. Apple alleges Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones and tablet computers copy Apple’s popular iPad and iPhone.

The lawsuits are the latest in a long string of patent disputes among phone makers. In recent years Apple, Microsoft Corp., Nokia Corp., HTC Corp. and others have taken legal action to protect their intellectual property rights.

SEOUL—Samsung Electronics Co. is considering selling its money-losing hard-disk-drive business to raise cash to invest in new growth areas, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Samsung is looking to sell the unit for $1.5 billion, but it may consider a deal under $1 billion, the person said.

A potential buyer for the business is hard-disk maker Seagate Technology Inc., the person said.

A spokesman for the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company declined to comment.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s biggest maker of memory chips and liquid-crystal-display televisions, has seen its earnings decline recently; earlier this month, it gave a weak earnings estimate for the first quarter. A sale of the company’s hard-disk business would help generate cash for reinvestment in promising business areas.

In February, Samsung Electronics said it would set up a joint venture with U.S.-based biopharmaceutical-services firm Quintiles Transnational Corp. as part of a move to diversify away from consumer electronics.

The hard-disk-drive, or HDD, industry has been under pressure from the success of sales of Apple Inc.’s iPad and other tablet computers, which store data on flash-memory chips rather than on magnetic disks.

The new devices are weighing on the sales growth of consumer-laptop computers, which are major users of disk drives.

Samsung, which held about an 11% share of the global HDD market in the fourth quarter, has been losing money with the business.

“Samsung is considering selling its HDD business as it is not strategic to succeed; [Samsung] is neither a follower or a leader in the business, and it’s making a loss,” said the person familiar with the matter.

The person said, “$1.5 billion seems a reasonable price to sell,” but added “it could even be sold for under $1 billion as Samsung is trying to get rid of it.”

In March, Western Digital agreed to acquire Hitachi Ltd.’s hard-disk-drive business for about $4.3 billion in cash and stock, a deal that created a dominant player with a nearly 50% market share.

Seagate accounted for 29% of HDD shipments in the fourth quarter, according to research firm iSuppli.

Richard Kugele, an analyst at Needham & Co., said “there is really no legitimate alternative” to a sale of the unit to Seagate other than for Samsung to shut it down.

He predicted such a sale wouldn’t be opposed by antitrust authorities because there is little overlap between the Samsung and Seagate businesses in what the industry calls enterprise drives, which are typically used with server systems and is an area where Seagate has the largest market share.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Texas Instruments Inc. has updated its leading-edge digital foundry strategy-and slammed Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s foundry efforts in the process.

For its current applications processor-the OMAP 4-TI has three foundry partners building the 40-nm device: Globalfoundries Inc., Samsung Electronics, and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC).

Recently, TI rolled out the next-generation applications processor based on a 28-nm process, dubbed the OMAP 5. Taiwan’s UMC will take the ”lead role” in making the OMAP 5 device on a foundry basis for TI, said Kevin Ritchie, senior vice president and manager of TI’s technology and manufacturing group.

For the OMAP 5, TI may work with other foundries, but Samsung does not appear to be one of the candidates. With the OMAP 4, TI has been ‘‘dissatisfied” with its foundry arrangement with Samsung, Ritchie said.

”We have not been pleased with the results” at Samsung, he told EE Times in a telephone interview.

Samsung has indeed built and shipped parts for TI. ”I can’t complain about the yields,” he said. ”I can complain about everything else.”

He implied that Apple Inc. is taking an inordinate amount of time and attention away from Samsung’s foundry unit-a possible reason why TI is upset.

Apple is a huge customer for Samsung. As reported, Samsung is building Apple-designed processors for the iPhone and iPad on a foundry business for Apple. Samsung is adding a $3.6 billion addition to its fab in Texas, reportedly just for Apple. And Samsung is hiring 300 new fab engineers for the plant.

Regarding Samsung’s future as a foundry partner within TI, Ritchie said TI will rely on Samsung to a ”lesser extent” at 45-nm. Samsung is ”off our radar at 28-nm,” he said.

Surprisingly, TI’s ”lead” OMAP 5 foundry partner is UMC. ”UMC, for us, is everything that Samsung is not,” he said. UMC ”does not get enough credit.”

An e-mail to Samsung public relations officials was not returned. A call to Samsung was not returned by presstime.

Globalfoundries, Samsung and TSMC have announced their respective 32- and 28-nm processes and are not shy to talk about them. On the other hand, UMC has been eerily quiet in recent years. In various technical papers, Taiwan’s UMC has discussed its process technology, but it does not brag about it.

TI’s disclosure raises more questions about Samsung’s ambitions in the foundry business. For some time, the company claims it will be one of the biggest players in the business and is throwing money around in the arena.

Samsung has garnered several foundry customers, such as Ixys, Qualcomm, TI, Xilinx, among others. But according to the rankings, Samsung was only the world’s 10th largest foundry in terms of sales in 2010, behind the leaders by a wide margin, according to one research house.

There are now rumors that Samsung’s biggest foundry customer-Apple-may work with rival TSMC on the A5 processor and follow-on devices. That could be a blow for Samsung and its foundry efforts. However, Samsung is fabbing the A5 processor used in the Apple iPad 2, according to teardowns of the system and chip conducted by UBM TechInsights, a division of United Business Media, publisher of EE Times.

Regarding TI, the Dallas-based chip maker works with multiple foundries, such as Globalfoundries, Samsung, SMIC, UMC and others. TI and UMC are no strangers to each other. UMC was TI’s ”lead” foundry for its digital products at the 90-nm node. TI also worked with other foundries at that node.

At 65-nm, TSMC was the lead foundry for TI. TSMC is making ”high-performance” devices on a foundry basis for TI at the 40-nm node, Ritchie said.

At 45-nm, for the OMAP 4, TI relies on Globalfoundries, Samsung and UMC. At 28-nm, TI will work with UMC and others.

Like Taiwan rival TSMC, UMC is devising two options for its 28-nm process. One is a traditional polysilicon gate stack. The other is a high-k/metal-gate offering. Initially, TI plans to go with a polysilicon gate-stack technology for the OMAP 5.

TI is also evaluating foundry vendors for the 20-nm node. ”We have not finalized that yet,” he added. Globalfoundries, Samsung and TSMC have announced their respective 20-nm processes.

April 1 (Bloomberg) — Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s second-largest mobile-phone maker, aims to become one of the three biggest producers of network gear in four years by tapping demand for new equipment that can handle data faster.

“In terms of revenue and the number of contracts, we’re trying to break into the top three,” I.P. Hong, head of the marketing group at Samsung’s Telecom Systems Business, said in an interview in Seoul. “We’re positively forecasting we’ll be able to achieve that around 2015.”

Samsung, which says it ranks in the top 10, is vying for a larger share of a $34 billion phone-network equipment market dominated by Ericsson AB, Huawei Technologies Co. and Nokia Siemens Networks. The companies compete for contracts to provide routers and switches for fourth-generation networks as operators invest to meet a surge in data traffic spurred by the popularity of Web-connected mobile devices.

From this year, Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung will accelerate sales of products based on the 4G wireless technology known as long-term evolution, or LTE, Hong said yesterday.

The market for LTE equipment will probably surge fourfold to $12 billion by 2014 from $3 billion this year, Hong said. Ying Weimin, president of Huawei’s LTE business, forecast in November that global contracts for such gear may climb to $10 billion in the same period.

Samsung rose 0.9 percent to 940,000 won, the highest level since March 4, at the 3 p.m. close of trading in Seoul. The stock has declined 1 percent in 2011 after advancing the past two years.

Market Growth

The global wireless equipment market will expand about 5 percent this year, Dell’Oro Group, a researcher based in Redwood City, California, said in November. The industry was probably worth about $34 billion in 2010, according to Stefan Pongratz, a Dell’Oro analyst.

Samsung aims to boost its network equipment sales by 30 percent to 40 percent annually, Hong said, declining to say how much revenue was generated last year.

The company is working with 13 phone operators in eight countries including the U.S. to build LTE networks. Samsung is trying to win “a few more contracts” in the U.S., which will remain the biggest market at the early stage of the transition to 4G, and is also seeking opportunities in China, Europe, India and Southeast Asia, Hong said.

While a mass deployment of LTE networks won’t take place until 2014 to 2015, Samsung has begun to roll out smartphones supporting the technology and plans to introduce a tablet computer capable of running on LTE in the second half, he said.

Samsung’s focus so far has been on developing products using WiMax technology, an alternative 4G standard to LTE, Hong said. Growth of the WiMax market, of which Samsung has about a one-third share, probably has peaked as operators switch to LTE and next-generation WiMax, he said. Samsung will continue to adopt both technologies, he said.

When Steve Jobs misquoted a Samsung executive at the early March launch of the iPad 2, Samsung declined to comment on the slight. Instead, it rapidly redesigned its tablets to be even thinner than Apple’s widely-admired device. On Monday, when Samsung unveiled the new tablets at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Orlando, the message was clear: Samsung would defend itself through its products, not words.

Even in the fast-paced gadget industry, it’s rare to rework a product that has already been unveiled. It’s even rarer to do it in the space of a few weeks. In the case of its Galaxy Tab 10.1, so named because it sports a 10.1-inch screen, Samsung did both. Through a few hardware changes, Samsung compressed the device, which was first introduced at the Mobile World Congress trade show in mid-February, to a width of 8.6 millimeters. The iPad 2, in comparison, is 8.8 millimeters thick.

In an interview at CTIA, Samsung executives confirmed that they reworked their newest tablets in response to the iPad 2. In typical Samsung fashion, however, they refrained from actually mentioning Apple in their responses.

“Samsung is determined to outperform and become the world’s leader in any area,” said Young-Hee Lee, the company’s vice president of marketing, who also happens to be the executive that was misquoted at the iPad 2 launch. This “never-stop spirit” “accelerated the evolution” of the Galaxy Tab after the iPad 2 was announced, Lee added.

Omar Khan, the Chief Product Officer of Samsung’s mobile division, said the company’s philosophy was ‘We’re not going to be outdone.” Outdone by anyone, yes; but, specifically by Apple.
The second tablet Samsung announced Monday, an 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab, is equally slim and weighs 470 grams. It, too, likely benefited from a quick redesign. After all, Samsung’s original, 7-inch Galaxy Tab, which launched last fall, is 11.4 millimeters thick. Khan declined to confirm that point, noting, “The 8.9 Galaxy Tab was never announced before, so there was nothing to modify.”

How did Samsung squeeze more than two millimeters of bulk and four grams of weight out of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the space of several weeks? It turned to technology that was already in its labs — though not yet commercialized.

“We went back to the drawing board,” acknowledged Khan. But since Samsung “spends billions on research and development annually”, the “innovations necessary” to enable the company to redesign 10.1 were ready, said Khan.

Samsung prefers to remain vague about the exact nature of those innovations. But it’s clear that it will continue tweaking the tablets up until they actually go on sale, in early June for the 10.1 and “early summer” for the 8.9 version. “We’re always looking for better options…and to outperform the industry standard,” said Lee. If Samsung identifies any other “improvement points” before the summer launch, the company will adjust its tablets again, she added.

Who will get these sleeker tablets? All U.S. consumers and most global consumers. Samsung has a deal with UK-based carrier Vodafone to launch the Galaxy Tab 10.1 before other operators get access. Lee said Samsung is honoring that agreement and currently hashing out which version of the tablet Vodafone will sell. U.S. consumers will get the thinner Tab in early June, according to Khan.

Though Samsung did not showcase any phones at its CTIA press conference, it does have a new handset, on Sprint — a 4G version of the Nexus S Android phone that originally launched on T-Mobile USA last year. The company’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S II, which was announced at Mobile World Congress in February, will also be coming to the U.S., said Khan.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Rumors are running rampant that Apple Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) are expanding their foundry ties-a possible blow for Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

With little or no fanfare, Apple and TSMC have recently entered into a foundry relationship, sources said. As reported, TSMC will make the A5 dual-core processor on a foundry basis for Apple’s iPad 2. That can be read here and here.

Apple will use TSMC’s 40-nm process for the A5, according to a source. ‘’Apple will also work with TSMC on 28-nm” processes, according to a source.

This could be seen as a setback for Samsung. Samsung is making the A4 processor on a foundry basis for Apple’s original iPad. Samsung is also making the processor for the iPhone. It’s unclear if Samsung will make the A5 for Apple.

Apple itself designed the A4, A5 and processor for the iPhone. The processors are based on ARM’s technology.

Apple, according to the source, will use TSMC for three reasons: 1. Samsung competes with the iPhone and iPad; 2. TSMC has the highest yielding 40-nm process in the foundry world; and 3. TSMC has the most 40-nm capacity.

Samsung, Motorola, RIM and a plethora of others are also selling tablet PCs. ”Overall inventories are healthy at the moment, but there are concerns of component overbuild in tablet space,” according to a new report from VLSI Research.

”This is driven in part by overly optimistic unit growth, especially for non-Apple tablets where there’s a plethora of new devices (we’re tracking more than 200 SKUs). Moreover, as the tablet war shifts into the pricing front, many companies will find it difficult to compete with Apple, which has a significant cost advantage over the competition,” according to the report. ”While some of these tables will likely gain traction in the market place, many others will not. If the tablet build up turns into a glut late in the year, foundries are likely to suffer, given their aggressive capital expansion plans.”

Still, ”iPad 2 production ramping faster than expected,” according to a report from FBR. ”Our contacts now see 1Q11 iPad production at 5.5 million units, up from 5.1 million units previously. Importantly, iPad 2 production is now set at about 2 million units, up from about 300,000 units previously, as some key bottlenecks (likely touch panel availability) were addressed in time to meaningfully ramp
March production.”

For 2Q11, ”our contacts now see 7.2 million units of iPad production, up from our prior forecast of 7.0 million units. Importantly, almost all of the 2Q11 production is of iPad 2 devices, meaningfully ahead of the prior iPad 2 production ramp plans,” according to the report.

”Our contacts expect 45 million iPads produced in 2011. Our contacts continue to expect 45 million iPad builds in calendar 2011, meaningfully ahead of the Street. When looking at the linearity of 1H11 (13 million units) and 2H11 (32 million units) iPad production, it seems Apple is planning on some very large iPad 2 sales volumes in 2H11 in order to achieve its annual target, with even cheaper price points likely necessary in order to achieve these 2H11 volumes,” according to the report.

At Mobile World Congress, the chips that power mobile devices are getting as much attention as the gadgets themselves. Over the past week Broadcom, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have announced new chips that look more like PC processors.

Mobile World Congress, the mega-conference taking place in Barcelona this week, is all about mobile phones. But the chips that power mobile devices suddenly seem to be getting as much attention as the gadgets themselves.

Over the past week a who’s who of chipmakers including Broadcom, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have announced new application processors. The pace of development has picked up as chipmakers start to focus on tablets, which operate on a faster PC cycle, as well as smartphones which have traditionally had long design cycles. Suddenly these new chips–all of which are based on ARM designs–are starting to look a lot more like PC processors in terms of performance and capabilities.

The best example of this is Nvidia, a newcomer to general-purpose processors that is challenging both incumbent wireless chipmakers, and to a lesser degree Intel and AMD, with its Tegra line. Nvidia was the first to ship a dual-core mobile processor, Tegra 2, and it worked closely with Motorola and Google to deliver the first Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablet. The Motorola Xoom, which will reportedly be available February 24, will be followed by Tegra 2 tablets from LG, Samsung and Toshiba.

But Nvidia is already on to its next big thing. This week it demonstrated a tablet using a next-generation Tegra, code-named Kal-El, with four ARM Cortex-A9 cores and a 12-core graphics processor. (My colleague, Sean Portnoy, covered the news here.) Nvidia said Kal-El will deliver 5x the performance of Tegra 2, which has eight graphics cores. More interestingly Nvidia showed Kal-El outperforming the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200, one of Intel’s older Merom processors for laptops. If Nvidia can stick with its aggressive schedule, Kal-El should be the first quad-core in its class when it goes into production in August (last year Marvell announced a processor using four 1.6GHz ARM-compatible cores, but the Armada XP is really designed for Web servers, network attached storage and media servers–not mobile devices). It will be followed by Wayne in 2012, Logan in 2013, and finally Stark in 2014, which Nvidia promises will deliver 75x the performance of Tegra 2.

Qualcomm has responded by adding a new standalone application processor to its Snapdragon line. It generally prefers to sell platforms that integrate the wireless communications and other components–a strategy that has worked well in smartphones–but it seems tablet companies want the flexibility to mix and match the best processors with different Wi-Fi and 3G/4G modems.

First, Qualcomm announced the APQ8060, a dual-core processor with Adreno 220 graphics that will power HP’s TouchPad, which is due this summer. This week Qualcomm followed up with its next-generation line of Snapdragons, code-named Krait. It will include the APQ8064 with four cores running at up to 2.5GHz and Adreno 320 graphics. Qualcomm said it will deliver 150 percent better performance than “currently available ARM-based CPU cores” and 15x better graphics than the original Adreno. The line will also include the single-core MSM8930 with an integrated LTE modem and the dual-core MSM8960 with a dual-code 3G/LTE modem. The Krait processors will also be manufactured on a more advanced 28nm process and will use 65 percent less power than current ARM-based processors, according to the company. The Snapdragon processors are compatible with the ARM instruction set, but Qualcomm designs its own CPUs (using ARM recipes) which enables it to further optimize power management. Qualcomm will ship early samples of its MSM8960 to customers next quarter, but the MSM8930 and APQ8064 won’t be available until sometime next year.

Samsung and TI are focused on building powerful standalone application processors.

Samsung announced the Exynos 4210 (formerly known as Orion), an application processor with two Cortex-A9 cores running at 1GHz that will power the Galaxy S II smartphone (the 10-inch Galaxy Tab 2 tablet, however, will use Tegra 2). Samsung hasn’t said much about the graphics; there have been some reports that the Exynos 4210 uses ARM’s Mali graphics, but I think it is more likely that it uses Imagination Technologies PowerVR, like Samsung’s current Hummingbird Cortex-A8 processor. (Samsung is generally believed to be the manufacturer of Apple A4 processor–though neither company has ever confirmed it–and there has been lots of speculation about the features of the A5 as well.) The Exynos 4210 will be in production in March.

TI’s OMAP 4 platform has been in the works for some time (TI announced it at last year’s MWC), but the first device to use the OMAP4430, RIM’s PlayBook tablet, should arrive in late March or early April. The OMAP4430 is based on two Cortex-A9 cores running at up to 1GHz and Imagination’s PowerVR540 graphics. LG’s Optimus 3D will also use this chip (Anandtech posted some interesting benchmark results yesterday). TI will follow up with the OMAP4440, which boost the frequency to 1.5GHz and has better graphics performance. It will be in production in the second quarter.

Naturally at MWC this year TI announced the OMAP 5 platform, which is likely to be the first application processor based on ARM’s Cortex-A15. The Cortex-A15 is not only faster, but it also supports more memory and hardware virtualization. With two CPU cores running at up to 2GHz and multi-core graphics, OMAP 5 will have 3x the processing power and 5x better 3D graphics than OMAP 4, according to TI. The company hasn’t discussed the graphics in any detail, but the GPU is likely to be a multi-core version of Imagination’s PowerVR SGX543. There will be two flavors: the OMAP5430 with stacked low-power DRAM for smartphones and the OMAP5432 with external DDR2/DDR3 for “mobile computing and consumer products.” Like Qualcomm’s Krait, TI’s OMAP 5 will be manufactured on a 28nm process and TI says it will use 60 percent less power than OMAP 4 (which is manufactured on a 45nm process). TI says some customers will get early samples later this year, but OMAP 5 won’t show up in mobile devices until the second half of 2012.

Like Qualcomm, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson focus on integrated chipsets that include powerful application processors, wireless modems and other system components.

At MWC, Broadcom announced the BCM28150, which includes an HSPA+ baseband and the company’s Merlyn applications processor, with two Cortex-A9 cores running at 1.1GHz and its VideoCore IV video and 2D/3D graphics processor. The platform, which also includes RF, power management and connectivity chips, is designed for “affordable” Android smartphones. The company has not said when it will be available.
ST-Ericsson announced the U8500, with two Cortex-A9 cores and ARM’s Mali-400 graphics, way back at MWC in 2010, and should have beat Nvidia to the dual-core punch. But it fortunes have been closely tied with a struggling Nokia (it looks like the N9, which was rumored to use the U8500 and MeeGo, may never see the light of day).

This year ST-Ericsson rechristened its platform NovaThor and announced several new additions with some very high-end specs. The NovaThor U9500 combines an application processor (the Nova A9500) with two Cortex-A9 cores running at 1.2GHz and Mali-400 graphics with an HSPA+ baseband making it a direct competitor to the BCM28150. It is currently sampling and will be available later this year. In the second half of the year, ST-Ericsson will start sampling an enhanced version manufactured at 32nm, the Nova A9540, clocked at up to 1.8GHz and with four times the graphics performance of the U8500.

But the big news here is the Nova A9600, which will be based on two Cortex-A15 cores running at up to 2.5GHz manufactured on a 28nm process. ST-Ericsson claims it will also be the first processor with Imagination’s PowerVR 6 series, code-named Rogue, capable of 210 gigaflops (a gigaflop is a billion floating point operations per second). Overall the A9600 will have 200 percent better performance and 20x better graphics than the U8500, according to the company. A direct competitor to TI’s OMAP 5, the A9600 will be sampling this year but isn’t likely to show up in devices until well into 2012.

All of this sounds impressive, but is there really a need for this kind of power in a mobile device? In a blog post, Nvidia’s Mike Rayfield claimed there is real demand for these multi-core monsters. “You might well ask, ‘What on earth can be done with nearly 75x improvement in performance over Tegra 2 that Stark will provide in 2014?’ Our customers and partners have already indicated that they’re confident they can use everything we give them.” The usage scenarios that are mentioned frequently include heavy multi-tasking, the capture and playback high-resolution video (1,080p and even 1,440p) at up to 60 frames per second, stereoscopic 3D images and video, support for multiple cameras with sensor resolutions as high as 20 megapixels, to ability to drive multiple high-resolution displays, and augmented reality applications.

Intel is battling all of these companies as it works to shrink its x86 architecture down into mobile devices. I expected to hear more on Intel’s Oak Trail platform for tablets out of MWC, but it now looks like that may have to wait for Computex in June. Intel did announce that its 32nm Medfield processor for smartphones was sampling, and CEO Paul Otellini vowed that smartphones using its silicon would ship this year. The acquisition of Infineon’s wireless business should also make it much easier for Intel to integrate wireless technologies–the new Intel Mobile Communications unit announced several new modems at MWC–making its platform more competitive with those of Broadcom, ST-Ericsson and Qualcomm.

Intel continues to insist that the x86 architecture is a critical advantage, but the software world is changing too. On the mobile front, Intel lost its key partner for MeeGo when Nokia threw its lot in with Windows Phone. On the PC side, the shift to cloud-based software and services and the rapid growth of the iOS and Android ecosystems for tablets have partially neutralized the x86 advantage. Most important, Microsoft has now committed to porting the next version of Windows and Microsoft Office to ARM. These new versions should arrive in late 2012 just as mobile devices using these 28nm multi-core processors are hitting the market (and as 4G LTE is hitting its stride).

Most of these new application processors will end up in smartphones and tablets, but the combination of more powerful hardware and broader software support will spur the creation of entirely new devices as well. We will almost certainly see hybrid devices along the lines of the Motorola Atrix using multi-core ARM-based processors and running Windows or Android. All in all, it should make for a very interesting 2012.