The global tablet applications processor market showed an impressive 83% year-on-year growth in 2012 to reach US$2.7 billion, according to Strategy Analytics (www.strategyanalytics.com).

The research group notes that Apple continued its dominance in the tablet applications processor market with 48% revenue share in 2012. NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, Samsung and Qualcomm made up the rest of the top-five vendors. Strategy Analytics identified that a handful of Chinese tablet chip vendors captured 20 % volume share between them.

"NVIDIA led the non-iPad tablet market with 27% revenue share in 2012," says Sravan Kundojjala, senior analyst, Strategy Analytics. "NVIDIA scored high-profile design-wins such as the Google Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface RT, which fueled 83 percent year-on-year growth in its tablet applications processor shipments in 2012. Strategy Analytics states that NVIDIA is well-positioned to address the high-performance tablet market with its new Tegra 4 chip."

According to Stuart Robinson, director of the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service: "Strategy Analytics believes that Intel and Qualcomm missed the tablet boat in 2012. We estimate that Qualcomm and Intel together captured less than 5 percent volume share in the tablet applications processor market in 2012. Strategy Analytics states that Intel and Qualcomm's tablet success hinges on Microsoft Windows tablet operating system's take off."