Although Intel Corp.’s success on the market of application processors for smartphones deserves to be better, the company managed to become the world’s second largest supplier of system-on-chips for tablets, according to Strategy Analytics. The only company that ships more SoCs for slates is Apple, which only “ships” them to itself.

The global tablet applications processor (AP) market registered a solid 23 per cent year-on-year growth to reach $945 million in Q2 2014, Strategy Analytics reports. Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung captured the top-five tablet AP revenue share spots in Q2 2014, the analysts claim.

Apple maintained its tablet SoC market lead with 26 per cent market share, Intel commanded 19 per cent of the market and Qualcomm was the No. 3 with 17 per cent revenue share. This makes Intel the world’s largest supplier of APs for non-Apple tablets. The company itself said it sold 10 million SoCs for tablets in the Q2 2014.

“The non-Apple tablet AP market leadership position continues to change hands and during Q2 2014 it was Intel’s turn,” said Sravan Kundojjala, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics. “Previously six companies held the non-iPad tablet AP leadership position, which continues to be a challenging one to sustain. Strategy Analytics believes that Intel is on a good trajectory to achieve its 40 million tablet AP shipment goal in 2014.”

While Intel is now a leader of the market of SoCs for media tablets, it should be kept in mind that there are numerous Chinese companies as well as Nvidia Corp, who desperately want to gain their share of the market.

“During Q2 2014, HiSilicon, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia and Qualcomm all registered significant shipment growth in the tablet AP market,” said Stuart Robinson, director of the Strategy Analytics handset component technologies service. “Strategy Analytics believes that Nvidia is well-positioned to grab high-profile tablet design-wins with its 64-bit Tegra K1 chip in the second half of 2014.”

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KitGuru Says: It is unclear how Intel managed to grab almost 1/5 of the tablet SoCs revenue in the second quarter, given reports about heavy discounts on its Atom chips in the Q2. Still, it looks like the company managed to keep its prices high during the period. Moreover, with the arrival of the Core M “Broadwell” offerings, Intel’s revenue share will go up once high-end Windows-based tablets get more popular.

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