Within the last 30 days, the two biggest brands, Google and Microsoft, announced a 7-inch and 10-inch tablet, respectfully, both powered by Tegra, bringing Nvidia’s penetration in the tablet market via big name brands to three, 50% of the players.

The shipment success of these brands and subsequently their processors won’t be known for a year, and it will be highly influenced by the holiday season. And unlike the Apple iPad, no lines formed in front of stores 24 hours before the announcement of the Google or Microsoft devices.

Apple and Samsung hold the big numbers in shipments, and that’s not likely to change quickly. Also, Apple may roll out their lawyers after they have had a couple of weeks to disassemble the Google Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface and find all the places of infringement. And Amazon is likely to throw some lawyers at Google, and maybe Microsoft too, because of the Barnes & Noble deal (not the screen size).

Even though the tablet market is still growing, and we think its growth rate relative to notebooks will be even greater for another year or so, the marketing expense and BOM pressure to win consumers is going to be horrendous. Of the top brands, only Microsoft has the money to carpet-bomb every media source and surface (no pun) to make their tablet impossible to ignore. None of the brands, with the possible exception of Samsung, can get the cool factor like Apple. Asus is the least well equipped to be in this fight, as clever as their design is.

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Tablets are consumer goods. Apple knew that before it launched the iPad. Samsung, which comes from a rich and successful consumer TV background, fighting the likes of Sony and LG, gets it. Microsoft never quite got it, although the company has done an admirable job with the Xbox360 (even though that device practically sells itself). Google has never been in the consumer hardware business, Amazon gets it totally, and Asus kinda gets it but doesn’t have the check book to really play with the big brand guys.

In PC land, the OEMs like Asus and HP get marketing subsidies from their suppliers like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. However, that logo label marketing subsidy program doesn’t work in consumer products—at least not yet—so the brands are on their own. Samsung hardly needs handouts from hmmm, whom—they make their own chips. Same for Apple. Amazon would never share prime marketing space with a lowly semiconductor supplier, and Google? Who knows what strategy Google will employ with their consumer tablet. Asus is tightly wed to Nvidia’s marketing largess, but even with it, that’s not enough to stand up to billboards in Times Square, company stores in major retail centers, and 20-second TV spots.

So the screen sizes have been picked, the processors have been selected, and to a certain extent the marketing direction has been set by the big brands. Now all that’s left is to see is which one has the best marketing and toughest lawyers. If Apple or Microsoft is successful in blocking a competitor from selling (as Apple has achieved with Samsung), that is another overlaying dynamic in the equation for success. It’s not about the silicon behind the screen; it’s the marketing and lawyers.

Nvidia has done a good job of getting established in the tablet space, but their success is out of their hands now. Now it’s in the hands of the suits.

Chinese footnotes: In addition to the big brands, Nvidia also has the distinction of being in one of the most expensive tablets, the pricey RedPad for Chinese government big shots.

The RedPad sells for 9,999 RMB ($1,580) over two times what any other tablet sells for. A Tegra 2 powers the 9.7- inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels.

Tegra 3 itself is said to offer around twice the graphics processing capabilities of its predecessor - achieved by doubling the amount of pixel shaders and increasing clock speed.

"Tegra 3 is a versatile processor, but lacks GPU power even up against the older iPad 2. NVIDIA's response has been to work with game-makers to optimise titles for the strengths of the processor."

However, the reality is that the core aspects of the architecture are somewhat out of date compared to some of the competition - the processor doesn't support unified vertex and pixel shading capabilities and there's very much a sense that in its initial forays into its low voltage parts, NVIDIA worked mostly on the principle of transplanting across its older PC architecture into the mobile scene. This may explain why many benchmarks give the Apple A5 in the iPad 2 anything from a 30 to 100 per cent performance advantage: IMG's components were built from the ground-up with power efficiency and mobile performance in mind.

NVIDIA's response is to point towards real-world comparisons of the same games running on both mobile platforms. In setting up its TegraZone, NVIDIA has worked with developers to create bespoke versions of their games which feature graphical advantages to exclusive to their platform. Shadowgun, for example, features additional GPU effects, higher resolution artwork and animated clothing not seen on the iOS version, but it does take a hit to frame-rate in comparison to the same game running on iPad 2. Sonic 4 Episode 2 also features a range of graphics effects exclusive to the TegraZone version of the game.

Even in the normal Android ecosystem, there are some intriguing differences. GTA 3 has locked graphical presets on iPad, but allows for PC-style customisation on Android - where there are so many more hardware platforms to accommodate. Once again there can be a frame-rate hit in certain situations, but an Asus Transformer Prime tablet running GTA 3 on max settings features considerably more detail in the environments compared to the game running on the latest iPad.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/tech-focus-the-rise-of-tegra-3?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily

Interesting; Nvidia employees the same strategy in mobile gaming as in PC gaming - they work with the devs to bring unique features to the games.