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somebodyspecial :
They'll lose that war too and the response won't come until way later with IN HOUSE again from Qcom. NV's going to be on a role for the next year or two in tablets at least until qcom goes back in house.
Only if phones and tablets were about 3D gaming and only if Nvidia sells chips for cheaper than Samsung, Broadcom, Qualcomm and others. There are tons of people who are not going to use their portable devices for gaming and for those, the power and cash cost of using a K1 is unnecessary overkill.
The market for lower-power, lower-performance, lower-cost SoCs is not going to spontaneously disappear just because K1 exists.
Last year and before it wasn't about gaming as much, more about a modem. Today, not so. NV won nexus this year due to the GPU not the price. NV doesn't have 65% discrete share due to price, but rather a BETTER product, support, and drivers. Intel doesn't have a monopoly due to cheap pricing, they have it because it is BETTER.
Cost of K1 is overkill? You do realize these socs are going for ~$25 right? Samsung and Apple aren't making wads of cash of $200 phones (which is why NV is not chasing them now, and only chasing high end phones/tablets). These two are making the bulk of their cash on the top of the line products, just like NV makes most from the same. We get cheap great stuff because a few people have tons to spend on the top stuff. Broadcom isn't in this race, and just gave up the modem race. Read more please. Price alone doesn't make all design wins happen.
I'd argue your tons of people not gaming comment too. With the majority of sales at any of the stores (google, amazon, apple) coming from games, and most of the time recorded on mobile going to gaming the facts just don't line up with your opinion.
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/applications/most-time-on-smartphones-spent-playing-games-1142615
Sure some people won't game, but NV isn't after those people right? They in fact said not after low-end phones now at all. They're only after high end phones, and tablet, and soon with denver and beyond/64bit/androidL etc your notebook and desktop at some point too. Gaming on PC's requires discrete for most. Gaming on mobile requires a great gpu for most and especially upcoming games this xmas/next as it really takes off, coming directly into NV's (or AMD) wheelhouse where everyone else has to catch up. This wasn't the case with the modem being king and not using things like watching movies before that hits your cap today in an hour (2GB isn't even a 1/2 of a 720p movie with decent bitrates and most of us have 2GB or less, only HK/Singapore have 10GB pretty normal and that's not going to watch many movies either). Without the need for ever faster modems (due to caps, killing the whole point of the speed), the gpu will become king if it isn't already happening now. IE ARM said sales of their socs were down because their gpu was behind, as Qcom/NV spanked them (with these two winning sales of devices hitting now or soon, chips were sold earlier since it takes 5-6 months to get it into a device from arrival at your door). Arms last quarter sucking due to the gpu is indicated by the devices those lost sales would be in over the next few months of releases (mali isn't winning devices, K1/S805 are and it had nothing to due to price). Qcom hasn't been giving discounts to win sales, they had a really great product until K1 caught them, which I predicted would happen in many posts here and elsewhere as desktop gpu hits socs and games take over.
More and more people will game as they find out they CAN now that gpu power is there to support it. PC gaming is growing because integrated stuff can actually play a few things now, where before you needed a discrete or that entire party was over. I didn't say the low-end would disappear. PC sales down but PC gaming revenue #1 (just past console total revenue at over $15.2B now) says more people can actually GAME now and don't require a console or discrete to do it as many have learned. Ten years ago many people didn't even know PC's could game (they kept buying integrated crap that really couldn't, so consoles ruled for most), however today apu's etc are allowing far more to realize pc gaming. This in turn eventually leads to "hey what are those discrete things for" once people get a taste, which sent NV revenues on records for gpus for many quarters even during pc's decline in this economy etc. PC sales were down ~12% last year and NV set records quarter after quarter. They get a taste on the low-end now, and say hey, for a few dollars more...on their next purchase. More get the importance of the gpu today right? Or how does NV set revenue records in a hugely down market?
You're also acting as though the gpu can't scale down when not needed. If that was the case, you'd get the same hours browsing the web as when gaming, and we know that isn't the case as you can power gate off much of it when not needed on cpu and gpu. K1 is in a $300 tablet not subsidized and making money also, thus proving it's not that costly right? It doesn't have to be a $600 device to be able to fit a K1 in it's budget. Yet you think price will hold this thing back? A $300 phone or tablet can sell well in many markets and we don't know if that's as low as they can go, or NV is just making a good mint on them due to the perf allowing it. We'll know in a few quarters if it's making more than T3/T4 did and we'll see how low they can go as more devices come with it. T4 has been in $200 devices for quite some time. The difference between crap and great in these things is like $10. IE previous mediatek chips sold for $10-15 vs. Tegra4 at $20-25. With Mediatek moving up I think they're getting a bit more now, but still overall these socs are all dirt cheap as a component in any of these devices. You also act as thought hey can't ship a lower clocked part if desired.
One more point, samsung is forced to source from qcom just to launch everywhere at once. Nothing is stopping Nv from winning some of that too, and it won't just be about price as I'm pretty sure samsung gets their own chips cheaper than qcom, but they still use them a lot. But if they don't have the capacity, they'll buy someone else to get there rather than NOT sell a device in massive quantity. Any lost sale is someone else getting it (probably apple or google) and they make too much on each sale to care about a few bucks on a soc to get that sale. They'll pay what they have to vs. coming up short on 5-10mil galaxy s4, s5 etc...They own 68% of the material in the phone or tablet so they can easily make up $5-10 extra they have to pay someone else to sell that 68% of their stuff. I'm not saying they don't want a good price (everyone does), just that they don't care if it's making a large profit vs. a extra few bucks on a soc or making NONE on a lost sale to apple etc.
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