Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Making ARM chips for low/medium end tablets is a cut throat market. Rockchip did well initially but now Allwinner has passed them, and they seem to be in a challenging situation. Just look at Allwinner vs. Rockchip growth. Not to mention Mediatek that will eventually come with integrated cellular (including 4G). So for Rockchip, it may simply be a defensive move: life is too hard and competitive on the ARM side, so try to find a niche in the x86 side. I'm very doubtful it'll work out: the volume is in the low/mid tiers, and the average consumer doesn't care about the CPU architecture. It's just a basic Android tablet, period. I don't see a worthwhile differentiation on Intel side, except the current crazy subsidies but those can't last forever. And this market is not faithful: the chip makers need to provide mostly everything to the ODMs (Mediatek is quite famous there, providing even the production and test process and tooling ready to deploy), and this makes changing chip provider rather easy. There is no loyalty, only a focus on low prices.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: