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If you own an Android device, you should already be familiar with something that’s we’ve been seeing a lot in Android – app exclusives. With the release of the Xperia Play, we’ve seen certain apps that are supposedly optimized for and can only be found on that specific device. Nvidia may have started off the trend when they launched their Tegra Zone app store and even Amazon has jumped on the bandwagon with their own AppStore featuring game exclusives like (the incredibly fun) Hero Princess. If you thought you may have seen the last of app fragmentation taking the Android world by storm, think again.
Qualcomm has announced that they will be diving into the Android gaming market by releasing their own Snapdragon Game Pack which essentially is an app store catered to/around devices featuring Qualcomm’s mobile chipsets and their powerful new Adreno GPU’s. They already have a few big name developers on board and look to feature over 100 games from companies like Glu, Gameloft, Namco, Polarbit and many more.
It’s no secret that Qualcomm has been on the offensive when it comes to rival Nvidia and their Tegra line of dual-core processors (see Qualcomm’s Youtube channel) and this is just another way for them to stick it to Nvidia. Qualcomm has been late to the dual-core scene and it looks like they’re trying extra hard to make themselves the mobile platform of choice for publishers in the future. Whether or not this new app store will become a success remains to be seen but it appears we have a new factor involved in making our next smartphone purchase with app exclusives possibly playing a roll in that decision.
[Via Reuters]
Dear Qualcomm,
Want to know how to jab nVidia? Show something more impressive than the Tegra Kal-el because that Computex Tegra demo just blew everyone away. If you can’t, shut the @#$% up and get working on a better SOC.
Qualcomm is definitely going to release quad-core processors and so goes anything with tech, whoever comes out latest, offers more power.
Not necessarily. Remember the Athlon64 era?
By the time Qualcomm is ready to go with their quad core SOCs (next spring), nVidia will be showing off the Tegra Logan. nVidia’s roadmap even puts them ahead of TI’s OMAP5.
The Tegra 2 is holding up quite well for year-and-a-half-old hardware without NEON.
The only way nVidia won’t lock down the High performance handheld computing market is if they don’t deliver on their promises.
Otherwise, nVidia is going to be the dominant force in high-end mobile by 2013.
With chainfire’s 3D app, you can play almost any qualcomm or tegra or powerVR specific games. Check out XDA!!
Really!? A competition between android devices! This wont help bring gaming to android I’m sure! If you make games for one make em for all! At least all with higher end processors!
“App Stores” a new kind of fragmentation for Android. Great…
How do you know which one your phone has? Where does it say it?
This really will be the downfall of android. Mass consumers don’t want to have to care about the crap inside their phone and whether or not it will allow them to play their favorite game. They just want to open “the” app store and download it.
I see your point, and it might play out that way but hopefully not – If these developers see that their product isnt allowed to more than half the market they’ll eventually drop this business model. This seems like a way for qualcomm and nvidia to spur much more development and try to gain more marketshare for themselves, but the reality is if you have 30%nvidia, 30%qualcomm and the rest TI omap (we will see how the processor wars play out), well the developers would be missing most of their potential customers!
so, according to this article qualcom is getting a few exclusives from the likes of glu and gameloft, whereas nvidia is convincing major computer game developers to jump on board with the tegra chipsets. who do you think is the winner there? i honestly think this may be getting out of hand a little, but i would still go for nvidia. tehy are getting alot of heads turning their way, and it looks like strong support is coming to the tegra devices, with help from the infamous Unreal Engine3 making an appearance. i would still go with nvidia on this one. they know games alot better than qualcomm, and they know how to work with the developers. i will remain happy with my g2x for now, and am going to patiently await the arrival the the tegra3 phones next year!
All the Honeycomb tablets have Tegra 2. nvidia bring pc/console games to Android but Qualcomm is trying to fragment android even more.
At this point in time I’d like to send a massive thank you to mister Chainfire, who with his graces makes this kind of news irrelevant to those who are rooted and know what they’re doing.
This just help Apple more with there mass apple apps libarary, I thought google was going to catch them up but by the look of androidid device fighting internaly what chips to have on there phone will make apple even more hapyer……
This isn’t good for the typical consumer. They usually don’t sit their comparing the cpu/gpu/ram etc when purchasing new devices. When buying a new device and unknowingly switching from a Tegra device to a Qualcomm of vice versa they effectively lose access to any and all games/apps they purchased because of this type of fragmentation.
People who thought that Android was fragmentated enough with the android builds 1.6/2.0/2.1/2.2/2.3 this is even worse. Atleast when you buy a new device ith a newer OS build your old app still work. Now if you change CPU manufacturer you lose all your apps/games and be forced to repurchase.
IMHO Qualcomm needs to be appealing to handset makers, not consumers.
99% of consumers are not going to know that different chipsets allow them to access different game markets. They will only find this out AFTER they purchase the device.
Qualcomm needs to just keep focussing on being the most effective chip for a handset maker to use in their next batch of phones. This could be through ease of coding, battery efficiency, speed, size, cost etc.
Tegra’s app store is the icing on the cake having already won the consumer – it allows them to extract a few more cents per device and markets the brand. It is not a way to influence consumers to buy one device over another.
gtfo. Exynos chip craps on both.