Only Toshiba Interested in NVIDIA Tegra 4

Sources seem to be jumping the gun a bit, saying Tegra 4 is slow to attract tablet and smartphone makers.

The usual suspects cited by the oh-so-spotty DigiTimes report that Toshiba is currently the only tablet and smartphone vendor to sign up for Nvidia's Tegra 4 SoC.

Of course, the chip was only revealed less than a month ago at CES 2013, and it won't officially launch until June 2013, so there's still time for device makers to jump on the Tegra 4 bandwagon. But sources appear to think the seemingly slow adoption rate has something to do with competing quad-core platforms developed by Qualcomm, MediaTek and China-based IC design houses.

Sources plead their case by pointing to Asus and Acer which have thus far been aggressive in the tablet sector. Both have reportedly not yet decided whether to place Tegra 4 orders with Nvidia due to a possible shift in focus from 10-inch form factors and above to the cheaper, seemingly more popular 7-inch entry-level market.

On the smartphone front, Qualcomm's close ties with Asus will likely prevent the latter company from choosing Team Nvidia. Sources said Asus will continue steering on the same lucrative Qualcomm-tainted path while setting Tegra 4 aside as a backup solution.

Sources added that in order to regain its momentum, Nvidia may reduce the price of its current Tegra 3 chip to attract entry-level orders from brand vendors. But even with a reduced price, Tegra 3 may not be able to compete in price with solutions from MediaTek and China-based IC design houses, they said.