Nvidia CEO Disappointed With Android 3.0 Tablets

Nvidia's leader thinks that Honeycomb tablets got off to a shaky start.

Nvidia's Tegra 2 mobile chipset scored a pretty big win as it is the de facto piece of hardware that powers the new generation of Android Honeycomb tablets.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, however, isn't so impressed with how sales are going for Android tablets. Naturally, there's nothing wrong with the hardware – the problem is in software availability and at the retail level.

"It's a point of sales problem. It's an expertise at retail problem. It's a marketing problem to consumers. It is a price point problem," he said in an interview with Cnet. "The baseline configuration included 3G when it shouldn't have. … Tablets should have a Wi-Fi configuration and be more affordable. And those are the ones that were selling more rapidly than the 3G and fully configured ones."

Huang also spoke of a "software richness of content problem," pointing to the lack of tablet-specific applications available right now. Still, he sees that things are getting better at a rapid pace.

The Nvidia leader also reiterated his confidence in the future of ARM CPU's continued rise in computing. "If you take a look at the number of devices that are being shipped today, there are far, far, far more ARMs computers being shipped than there are x86 computers being shipped," he said, as quoted by ZDNet. "And if that attracts more software developers, then there’s more rich software being developed for ARM that over time you would think that ARM becomes the most valuable platform for enjoying software.

"And so that’s how standardization happens and you know how fast mobile computing and the Internet and these application stores is causing new platforms to make a difference. It was only a few years ago that these ARM-based either iPhones or Android phones came to the marketplace, and just look at how many applications have been downloading, how many gigabytes have been downloaded of applications."