China's Allwinner Outsold Intel, Qualcomm In Tablet Processors In 2012

An anonymous reader writes "ARM licensee Allwinner sold more application processors for tablet computers in 2012 than Intel and Qualcomm put together, according to this EE Times article that references market researcher Strategy Analytics. Overall one in five tablet processors was provided by a Chinese vendor in 2012, according to the article, partly because they sell chips at half the price of similarly specified chips from better known vendors."

Comments

This is called dumping

[Reverand Dave]

This issue has been called into account by electronics manufactures in the western world against eastern manufacturers for decades. Basically, they are selling at or below cost to suck up market share. We (N. America) used to complain a lot louder about it until we started making all of our shit there too. However, popularity does not indicate quality. Just look at the millions of shitty pop records on the market now.

Re:This is called dumping

[Anonymous Coward]

People discount "Chinese hacking" stories, but I do remember how the US solar industry got utterly destroyed. First the solar companies were complaining about intrusion attempts and showing logs about attacks. Six months later, out came the panels from China that cost less than it took to gather the rare earths to dope the PV silicon.

Congress saved Harley from being curbstomped when foreign competitors came out with better products. Of course, something as critical to US national security as distributed energy availability [1] gets completely ignored as a "liberal" issue.

[1]: Distributed energy can be an important from a strategic point of view -- it means that a power line taken down means less of a disruption to the grid. However, oil independence seems lost on people in DC.

Re:This is called dumping

[ebno-10db]

Apparently you didn't even take your own argument seriously enough to maintain a straight face.

My, aren't we solemn. If making a joke invalidates all serious points, then I've never made a serious point in my life.

Re:This is called dumping

[ebno-10db]

ShanghaiBill: Dumping by Allwinner makes no sense ... The IP is owned by ARM (a British company) and there is no "lock-in": phone/tablet can easily switch since the software is compatible.

There's even less lock-in for commodity memory parts, yet the Japanese were dumping those parts back in the 80's. Years later they admitted that's exactly what they were doing.

ShanghaiBill: Dumping accusations are almost always BS from a competitor clamoring for protectionism and subsidies.

Do you have any evidence for such a broad statement, or are we just supposed to accept your assertion at face value?

ShanghaiBill: If the dumping was a real concern, it would be consumers that complain, rather than competitors.

WTF? Why would the consumers complain? I'm dying to hear that explanation.

ShanghaiBill: Allwinner is gaining market share because they keep their costs low, manufacture high volumes, and accept modest profit margins.

Keep their costs low? Semi fab is almost all capital costs, and the equipment costs are the same around the world. The only way to keep costs low in that situation is sweetheart loan rates and government loan guarantees.

Manufacture high volumes. Please name a digital semi fab that doesn't manufacture in enormous volumes. That's the only way you can amortize the cost of a multi-billion dollar fab.

Accept modest profit margins. Please provide a comparison between Allwinner's and their competitior's profit margins. For bonus points, please explain why you would believe the accounting statements of any Chinese company.

Re:This is called dumping

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the very definition of capitalism.
Trying to prevent Chinese companies from doing that would be called socialism.
Let's see all those right-wing Americans try to wiggle out of this one.

so?

[Cenan]

The article mentions 20% volume market share, that's pretty much the chineese share of the world's population. Congrats, you've retaken your own market, good for you guys.

The article also mentions that Apple has a 48% revenue share. What the fuck guys. Pick a measure and stick to it. All that tells us is that Apple phones are probably more expensive per processor than their competitors. Big surprise.

Allwinner is a winner.

[Robert Frazier]

I have a couple of tablets with Allwinner A10 SOC. Even better, there are development boards available with SOC, and some of them are Open Hardware, well documented boards. If you look at Wikipedia's list of Single Board Computers,
you will find the Allwinner on a number of development boards, such as the A13-OLinuXino, Cubieboard, Gooseberry, and Hackberry. In addition to Allwinner tablets, I have a couple of Raspberry PI SBCs. I'm hoping to get one of the Allwinner based development boards in order to see how it compares to the Raspberry.

Best wishes,
Bob

Why not....

[Lumpy]

The A8 and A13 processors absolutely rock and dont require a stupid NDA for you to sign just to get your hands on what is needed to use it.

Re: So what?

[iamhassi]

I find that hard to believe. I've owned one of these cheap chinese tablets, and the only thing it ran was a browser and even that was slow. Very few apps ran fast enough to be useable, and the only games that worked were 10+ years old like bejeweled. So while some people might buy these cheap tablets to "try out a tablet", it won't be long before they're throwing it across the room in frustration and wishing they just bought an ipad