By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News - EDN
The year ahead will be key for the adoption of multicore processors in netbooks and smartphones, according to In-Stat. The market-research company further projects that MIDs (mobile Internet devices) and UMPCs (ultramobile personal computers) will see an uptick in 2011 and that consumer-electronics devices will follow that trend in 2012 and 2013.

According to In-Stat, ARM architecture will see a higher growth rate as the architecture moves to multicore configurations. By 2013, almost 88% of the processors sold into the mobile market segment will be multicore processors, the company reports. “Integration of graphics/multimedia acceleration is a key trend, as well,” says Jim McGregor, an In-Stat analyst. “While multicore dominates in the high-performance mobile-computing segments, integration of graphics/multimedia acceleration favors the smartphone, MID/UMPC, and mobile-entertainment-device segment,” he adds. In-Stat expects the market for mobile merchant processing systems to grow at a 22.3% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) through 2013. At that time, the market should grow to about 775 million units.

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