Earlier this month, we heard that NVIDIA was running into problems getting companies interested in using its new Tegra 4 chips in their smartphones and tablets. More recently, we learned that the first of these SoCs would be made available to interested manufacturers in Q2 2013, but still didn’t have a solid read on just who (besides NVIDIA itself) was interested in using them. We heard that ASUS might be a possibility, but today we get our first real confirmed OEM, with ZTE announcing plans to create phones built around Tegra 4 chips.
These quad-core A15-based phones could be out even sooner than we thought, with ZTE announcing plans to introduce the first such devices before mid-year. Considering the rumored problems we’ve been hearing about Samsung and power-consumption issues with its Exynos 5 chips, that could be a bit of a coup for NVIDIA.
Granted, ZTE isn’t the most desirable manufacturer in many smartphone circles, so both ZTE and NVIDIA have a lot riding on this; if early devices aren’t a hit, NVIDIA could find itself struggling to attract other OEMs.
