By Taiwanese chip maker Mediatek recently finished development on a new 3G system-on-a-chip processor designed to do the heavy lifting on Android devices. While Mediatek has begun shipping sample CPUs out to manufacturers, full-scale production won’t begin until the end of the year.
The new chip could see handsets dropping to a $100 price range, and include an integrated 3G baseband and application processor. But don’t expect them to find their way to phones in the European or US markets any time soon.
As you probably could have guessed, the new Meditek processor will see the bulk of its use in devices destined for the Chinese market, where a low price point is a definite advantage. Not to say the rest of the world doesn’t like a bargain, and several reasonably priced phones have proven Android can make an impact at a cost usually reserved for feature phones. But I’m too busy getting excited about Intel’s new Atom chips and Nvidia’s Tegra 2 to get that jazzed up over low-cost CPUs.
[via UnwiredView]
sounds pretty dumb if you ask me
low cost cpu is the only way we can bring people from free phones that just make calls to a world where every free phone can do internet.
Why’s it dumb?
Not everyone needs the very best top of the line phone in the world.
Some people just want a nice phone and don’t want to have to spend $2-600 for it.
Believe it or not, there are still people in the world that use cellphones just as *GASP*
Phones…………..
Its a good idea and it will make phones cheaper for people.
Brilliant idea, and a clear path towards the ultimate victory of Android. Imagine all the youth being equipped with an Android powerhouse, at a fraction of the costs. That’s a huge market for Android developers and therefore brilliant for the Android ecosystem, since as we know, the platform with the best apps ultimately wins.
price competition brings down prices for the high end phones too. This is good news even if you don’t plan on buying the budget android phones.
Huge market for developers and will also attract more Chinese developers to the Android platform.
Invariably there will be some copied apps (but hey aren’t there at least 10 different fart apps anyway?)… but there will inevitable some interesting original apps too.
I think that’s a great news. Android would cater to more people with different financial level in the world and that’s the way it should be. Another victory for Android!
Will this equate to lower cost phones? No. Will this mean more revenue for the phone manufacturers? Yes.