Intel aims to ship 40 million application processors (APs) for tablets in 2014, up 400% from the volume in 2013, but most market watchers believe such a volume is quite a challenge. Digitimes Research expects the CPU giant to be able to ship 31.15 million APs in 2014, achieving about 80% of its goal, mainly thanks to its cooperation with PC brand vendors, which helped its platform to penetrate into the Android market that has been dominated by ARM.
Asustek Computer has adopted Intel's solutions for a whole series of mobile products. Asustek ranks as the fourth-largest tablet brand vendor worldwide, and is expected to become the biggest partner for Intel's tablet APs.
Since Intel's solutions are able to help both Android and Windows expand into the enterprise tablet market, and new high-price-performance-ratio 2-in-1 Windows-based tablets from vendors such as Lenovo, Acer, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell will start becoming available in the second half, PC brand vendors are expected to become the growth driver of Intel's tablet AP shipments in 2014.
As for the white-box market, with Intel providing subsidies and its China Technical Ecosystem (CTE) project to help develop reference designs for tablets and nurture a China-based supply chain to lower processor costs, Intel's tablet APs started gaining orders from some white-box players in China. However, development difficulties on x86-based tablets, shortages of components from Europe- and US-based makers, which Intel has partnerships with, and the limited longevity of the subsidies still concern most white-box players, Digitimes Research analyzed.
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