NVidia, AMD Battle to Turn Phones into Multimedia Platforms

With nearly every major consumer electronics device manufacturer lately having signed onto the notion that consumers everywhere are eager to watch CinemaScope movies on their cell phones and cell phone videos on their plasma HDTVs, the world's two principal manufacturers of graphics hardware are vying for center stage in Barcelona this week.

There, at the 3GSM World Congress, nVidia and AMD (we still have to get used to not saying "ATI") are making strong cases in favor of the convergence of all media, and that the center of that convergence is themselves.

NVidia this morning showcased its new GoForce 6100 multimedia and graphics processor for handsets. With the 6100 model, the company is trading 2 megapixels of onboard camera support - now down to 8 Mp - for a 30 frame-per-second H.264 and VC-1 decoder that supports 640 x 480 resolution. It features an analog audio subsystem with playback quality that promises to rival an Apple iPod, an integrated TV encoder for those new portable digital formats (including DVB-H), and the typical support for multiple DRM formats.

On the other side of the fence, AMD is offering the first three Imageon processors to bear the AMD moniker. At present, we don't know many specifics besides the fact that there are now three principal models: The 2298 and 2294 are being marketed to upscale models, while the 2192 targets the mainstream segment. Presumably it will be the 2298 which gets the 12 Mp camera support, and that's the only other technical specification we're getting at present. However, we do know that these processors are all targeting handsets with digital playback capability.

How will these developments affect the end consumer, and how soon? As PC OEMs have known for well over a decade, the ability to maintain the graphics processor separate from the main functionality lets display functionality evolve at its own pace. In the handheld segment, that pace has certainly become faster than the transmission (RF) and networking standards, some of which are only just now emerging from having been bogged down for years.

Modularizing the graphics processor in handhelds enables manufacturers to adopt them readily without having to redesign their handsets from the ground up just to support them. So today's announced chips could very easily find their way into new handsets announced this fall. The fact that these chips are focusing their feature set more on streaming media than on image processing will give you a preview of what all the fashionable phones for fall will be wearing.

Who uses these processors? GoForce processors from nVidia are found in Kyocera and high-end Samsung handsets, as well as several Motorola models, Acer PDAs and iRiver multimedia devices. Meanwhile, Imageon series (formerly from ATI) are found in BenQ-Siemens, Fujitsu, and several Motorola models, including some of the same models where you might also find nVidia chips. Both companies claim the RAZR v3 series among their design wins.

The push for multimedia-driven cell phones comes at a time when the message from manufacturers at 3GSM this year is the reverse of prior years: They want cheaper and more basic handsets to address the mainstream segments of the market where they see the most growth.

European and US carriers alike are reporting subscriber growth tapering off, as validated by this morning's statistics from hardware analysis firm iSuppli. While the growth rate in cell phone subscribers peaked at 26.7% annually in 2005, that rate started tapering down in 2006 to 23.8%, and is expected to continue to slope lower for the next three years - all the way down to a 5.7% growth rate. Electronics markets tend to like 10% or higher.

Manufacturers will flock to wherever they can find growth trends, iSuppli states, and for the next few years, those trends will be in emerging markets such as India and Africa. There, high-end phones such as the kind best suited for Imageon and GoForce processors won't be in very high demand.