Report: Qualcomm passes TI to dominate booming smartphone processor market

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) captured around half of all the revenue in the surging smartphone application processor market in 2011, according to a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics.

The research firm noted that the smartphone application processor market boomed 70 percent to $7.9 billion in 2011. According to the report, Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Marvell and Broadcom were the world's five largest vendors for smartphone applications processors in terms of revenue share last year. For the first time, Qualcomm, which banks on its line of Snapdragon chipsets to drive revenue growth in the application processor market, surpassed TI in terms of units sold on an annual basis, according to Strategy Analytics.

Broadcom, which is trying to increase its presence in the smartphone market significantly in 2012 as it seeks to build on the toe-hold it grabbed in 2011, grew its presence in the market 500 percent year-over-year and cracked the top five for the first time. Meanwhile, Nvidia wound up sixth in terms of units and revenue. Though it started off 2011 strong with its dual-core Tegra 2 processors, Nvidia's momentum slowed in the second half of the year, the research firm said.

Nvidia is poised to try to regain attention and market traction with its quad-core Tegra 3 chipset, and several handset and tablet makers are expected to debut devices with the silicon next week at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain. Indeed, all of the chipset makers are likely to tout their wares and advances in their platforms at the conference, particularly with how they can integrate applications processors with LTE modems.

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