HTC Corp., a leading maker of smartphones and other handsets, is projected to utilize Nvidia Tegra system-on-chip (SoC) for a new cell phone that is due to be out in the second half of 2009. According to an analyst, HTC will not be the only company to utilize Tegra SoC this year.

“We believe that HTC has selected the Nvidia Tegra applications processor for a new handset design that will ramp in [the second half of 2009]. We estimate Tegra could add $100 million to 2H09 results,” said Doug Freedman, an analyst of American Technology Research in a note to clients, reports International Business Times web-site.

Nvidia Tegra line of SoCs for handsets and mobile Internet devices (MIDs) was announced in early June, 2008. The product family was not exactly a success for Nvidia: despite of the fact that the company expected handset makers to start adopting Tegra by the end of 2008, it now seems that the first cell phones featuring the SoCs will be out only in the second half of 2009.

Nvidia needs Tegra to boost its revenue and profitability amid global economic slump and rapidly decreasing revenue streams from personal computer core-logic business. Fortunately for the company, there will be more handset makers to adopt Tegra, according to the analyst.

“This revenue will likely be very high margin, given the low-power design in a small-profile package is helping HTC achieve small form factors," Freedman adds. "We expect Tegra to sell in a range of $15 to $25 and have more than one customer in 2008,” said Mr. Friedman.

Nvidia Tegra 600-series SoCs features ARM11 central processing unit core, GeForce graphics core with programmable pixel shader and programmable vertex shader support, build-in low-power DDR memory controller, NAND flash memory controller, high-definition video processor that supports MPEG 4, H.264, VC-1/WMV9 decoding, H.264 and MPEG4 encoding and features some other capabilities. Besides, Tegra 600 and Tegra 650 support two displays, 12MPixel camera sensor, USB, Parallel ATA a variety of display outputs, including HDMI, as well as other necessary interfaces.

Nvidia and HTC did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Nvidia, Tegra, HTC