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Nvidia pins hopes for tablet success primarily on Nexus 7

Nvidia's CEO sings praises for newer Android tablets, especially the Nexus 7 made by Asus.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor

Following better-than-expected second quarter results posted on Thursday, Nvidia executives are pegging their future success on tablets -- specifically the Nexus 7.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang remarked during the quarterly conference call with investors today that Nvidia is counting on tablets to be a huge growth sector for the chip maker.

"A lot of people think that the tablet market in just a few more years will be as large as the entire PC mobile market," said Huang, adding that based on the number of tablets shipping today, he wouldn't be surprised by that. 

Huang cited that Android tablets, in particular, are finally coming into their own because "the costs, the functionality and the quality" are all finally coming together to produce a much more enjoyable and productive experience.

Huang posited that this has really become possible with latest Android OS releases (Ice Cream Sandwich and Jellybean) because these versions -- compared to Honeycomb -- produced a unified platform with smartphones, making the user experience all the more seamless.

It's really wonderful that all of the applications and all of my content stay synchronized between my phone and the Nexus 7 tablet. And so I think that the momentum of the products that we have are much stronger. Our position in the market is much stronger. And we'll see how these devices do in the marketplace. But at the moment we're quite confident in their position in the market.

For reference, Google's 7-inch media tablet, made by Asus, runs on Nvidia's Tegra 3 quad-core processor with a fifth battery-saver core.

But the real point is that Android tablets are finally getting to the point where each one isn't looked at as a "cheaper iPad," as Huang continued, but rather a "a peripheral or a companion device for someone who is really invested in the Android operating system."

The Nexus 7 finally, from a tablet perspective, made it really, really easy for you to enjoy and to synchronize all of your content that you've already invested in for your Android phone...
...I think it's taken this long to really build a platform that adds value to Android users, and so that's the value proposition. It's not an alternative to an iPad. It's really a device that enhances the user experience for someone who's an Android user and there happens to be hundreds of millions of Android users.

But it isn't only the Nexus 7 -- or even just Android tablets -- that has Nvidia excited. Huang also discussed the upcoming release of Microsoft's Surface tablet, which will also be running Nvidia's Tegra 3 quad-core processor.

I think they've done an amazing job, and it's a really, really cool device. So I can't say that I saw that coming. I was very positively surprised, and I think so was everybody else.

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