Texas Instruments is dropping from the system-on-chip for smartphones and tablets manufacturing and will give up on its OMAP lineup.
The company’s OMAP boards are less and less popular among mobile manufacturers – most of them bet on Qualcomm, while Samsung and Apple are developing their own solutions (Exynos, A6). The major disadvantage of the OMAP chipset is the lack of on-board 3G/4G modem.
That forces manufacturers who rely on OMAP chipsets to use additional radio chips, which increases battery consumption and production costs. Now you understand why smartphone manufacturers prefer Qualcomm’s complete solutions, rather than this expensive process.
TI says its focus will shift on “to a broader market including industrial clients like carmakers”, though it did not announce specifics and the investors were left wondering.
Anyway, TI will continue to support its current clients, but will significantly reduce efforts on developing new OMAP chipsets.
The news might come shocking for some, as the TI OMAP 5 was expected to be the first chipset with dual Cortex-A15 CPU, and now it's fate is uncertain. Nonetheless, TI OMAP's presence was barely felt on the market, so the company's exit won't create too much of a disturbance.
