Tablet Application Processor Market - Growth, Trends, Forecasts (2020 - 2025)

The tablet application processor market is expected to reach a CAGR of 5% during the forecast period from 2020 to 2025. The trend in automation has developed the need for intelligent and smart ways of transferring and storing the data, especially in the industrial sector. Industrial tablets are growing in popularity in the manufacturing sector. The manufacturing vertical chooses to deploy industrial tablets due to their reliability and durability. The tablets are integrated with serial ports, authentication, RFID, and card readers, which enable communication with any industrial third-party device. A player such as Intel is transferring the advantages of Moore’s Law and its leading transistor technology for higher performance and more energy-efficient processors to other computing segments in tablet, thereby further helping in driving the growth of the market.

• High adoption of octa-core application processors drives the market. The processor refers to an integrated circuit that implements eight independent physical execution units (core) on a single die. Its two sets of quad-core processors split various tasks between them according to type. Most of the time, the low-powered set of cores function when advanced tasks are needed; however, the faster set of four cores kicks to provide the advantage over quad-core in the tablet.
• All modern octa-core chips are based on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture. Several major chip manufacturers have based their efforts on this big.LITTLE, or octa-core, blueprint such as Samsung (Tab S 8.4, Tab S 10.5, Note 10.1), Sony (Z4 Tablet), Cube Talk 9X, etc., which drives the market.
• The increasing adoption of navigation applications in automotive applications drives the market. The adoption of rugged tablets is increasing for the GPS navigation application. The tablet having the nest GPS receiver chipset proves the highest resolution location in the fastest time to Android and window OS resolving the location of the tablet to the most accurate position. Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 rugged tablet (Intel Core m5-6Y57 vPro), Getac F110 rugged tablet (Intel Core i7-6600U 2.6GHz), Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 2 rugged tablet (Octa-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A53) are some of the prominent products that are highly used for the navigation applications. Hence with the increasing demand for transportation and the automobile segment, the demand for rugged tablets assists in driving the market.
• However, due to the impact of COVID-19, the market suffers from the current growth. Raymond James, in investment banking company, reduced its estimates for semiconductors used in mobile handsets and tablets based on an estimated 17 to 20% drop in the sale in China and a drop in the sale of Apple Inc. products of approx 12 to 16% during the second quarter of 2020, while digital transformation is keeping demand for tablet solutions growing in industry and enterprises, while the weak consumer performance remains the primary reason for the contraction in the market.
• From a consumer demand standpoint, there are a different set of challenges, but they mostly fall on one vendor. Having been backed into the Chinese market due to the US trade restrictions, Huawei’s tablet business was in a challenging position in early 2020 due to the barriers to movement in China (e.g., transportation restrictions, temperature checkpoints before entering buildings) and the impact of the distribution of processors and voluntary caution of people staying home. Overall the COVID-19 impact is restraining the growth of the market.
• While in India, the government has stopped all electronics manufacturing, shut down retail stores, and stopped the sale of electronics online as well, India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) and the Manufacturers Association of India (MAIT) have written to the government to allow the sale of tablets, smartphones, and other products online during the lockdown but no decision has been taken yet.

Key Market Trends

Apple iOS to Witness Significant Growth Rate

Apple Inc. designed System on Chip (SoC) and System in Package (SiP) processors for their tablet business. The combination of a low-power central processing unit (CPU) and other components into a physically compact package meet the stringent power and space constraints common to mobile devices.

• According to Apple, it extended its tablet application processor market share leadership with a 42% revenue share in Q2 2019, followed by Intel with 19% and Qualcomm with 17%. Apple A4 is a PoP SoC manufactured by Samsung. It combines ARM Cortex-A8 CPU with a PowerVR GPU and emphasizes power efficiency.
• The chip commercially debuted with the release of Apple's iPad tablet. Its most recent iPad models are the seventh-generation iPad, released on September 25, 2019. This caters to the demand and growth of the tablet application processors market in the iOS operating system.
• Further, the new iPad contained a new dual-core A5X processor with quad-core graphics, and a Retina Display with a resolution of 2,048 by 1,536 pixels, more than 50 percent more pixels than a standard 1,920 by 1,080 high definition TV screen. Apple prioritizes to doubled the size of the A5X's memory interfaces in comparison to the A5, including a memory interface subsystem with four 32-bit wide LP-DDR2 memory controllers, which was done to provide sufficient bandwidth for the very high pixel count on the third-generation iPad's Retina Display.
• Furthermore, in October 2019, the company releases Apple's Sidecar, which is a MacOS 10.15 Catalina feature that enables one to turn an iPad into a second display, working alongside the Mac. The feature also allows iPad Pro owners to use their tablet as an input device with an Apple Pencil. Sidecar needs iPads that support Apple Pencil. The iPad will also need to be running iPadOS.
• Further, Apple's Sidecar feature needs Macs that run with Skylake processors (Intel). The list of compatible iPads with the support of Sidecar are 12.9-inch iPad Pro, 11-inch iPad Pro, 10.5-inch iPad Pro, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, iPad (6th generation or later), iPad mini (5th generation or later), iPad Air (3rd generation).
• Also, Apple's A12Z Bionic is a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) that will be found in the iPad Pro 11 in the year 2020. It offers eight cores divided into four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores (up from the six cores in the A12 of the iPhone XS). It has enhanced thermal design means higher peak and longer sustained performance with the additional GPU core. Further, with the more new launch of the iPad tablet, the market in the iOS segment penetrates to increase in the future.

North America Accounts for Significant Market Share

North America accounts for a significant share, and due to various global players residing in this region, the market is significantly growing compared to other regions. Further, with decreasing the average price of consumer tablets in the United States, the rate of demand for the tablet is increasing; thereby, the need for tablet application processor increases. The two brands that dominate the market share are Samsung and Apple.

• Further, players are focused on launching their new tablet with previous version expansions or new versions. In April 2019, Samsung launched the Galaxy Tab A 10.1 and the Galaxy Tab S5e in the United States with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 CPU for Galaxy Tab S5e and for Galaxy Tab A 10.1 Samsung-made Exynos 7904 CPU replaced with the Snapdragon equivalent in the United States.
• The Snapdragon 670 has up to 15% better CPU performance than its predecessor, the Snapdragon 660, and up to double the AI performance. The Snapdragon 670 integrates the Kryo 360 CPU, an octa-core processor that has two performance cores and six power-saving cores, which can clock up to 2 GHz and 1.7 GHz.
• Further, North America is one of the leading regions of the global transportation & logistics industry. Moreover, the growing investments in the energy sector are also expected to drive the North American market. The energy industry, which is the third-largest industry in the United States, is attracting a large number of investments. For instance, according to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), the United States is expected to invest nearly USD 700 million over the next 20 years to drive renewable energy capacity, further helps to grow the market for the tablet in the industrial sector.
• Further, the e-retailer giant, Amazon launched the latest Fire HD 10 Tablet in October 2019 with Kindle Kids Edition e-reader and Fire HD 10 Kids Edition tablet as well. The devices are now listed for pre-orders in the United States. The tablet is based on a 2GHz octa-core processor with 32GB of inbuilt storage. The Kindle Kids Edition is a 6-inch ebook reader with a 167ppi e-ink display with adjustable screen light.
• Also, according to the Association of American Publishers, Children’s and YA category, reached USD 918.8 million in 2019, increasing revenues by 7.4% compared to 2018. The religious press revenue grew a significant 11.4% to reach USD 328.2 million in the first half of 2019, from USD 294.6 million in the first half of 2018 in the ebook category. Moreover, increasing demand for digitalized comic books is projected to drive the market in the region. Therefore comic book publishers such as DC Entertainment and MARVEL are expanding their portfolio to follow the trend of ebook tablets.

Competitive Landscape

The tablet application processor market is tending to move from consolidated to fragmented but with a slow rate, and the players are coming with new processor technology increasing the rivalry in the market. Key players are Qualcomm Technologies Inc., MediaTek Inc., etc. Recent developments in the market are -

April 2019 - Samsung introduced its new flagship tablet Galaxy TabS6 aimed at consumers that need advanced functionality and performance. The Galaxy Tab S6 is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 SoC, which features four high-performance cores, four low-power cores, and Adreno 640 integrated GPU. The application processor is accompanied by 6 or 8 GB of LPDDR4/LPDDR4X memory as well as 128 or 256 GB of NAND flash storage (expandable using a microSDXC card).

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