Rumor: Nvidia heading into 'white label' device production
updated 02:17 pm EST, Mon January 28, 2013
Suggests Russia, China flooded with mobile devices mid-2013
Nvidia may be moving towards building its own mobile devices for sale in Russia and China, according to one report. The chip maker, after showing off Tegra 4 at CES, could end up creating smartphones and tablets running on its own hardware, and end up selling them through OEMs as white label hardware.
The report by Mobile-Review alleges that Nvidia will be working with regional device brands such as Wexler in Russia to sell its hardware instead of cheaply-produced devices from China. Nvidia will apparently design and manufacture its own hardware, fully controlling the production pipeline and eventual product quality, and rely on the OEMs effectively for distribution. It is said that Nvidia's plan will start mid-2013, when a number of 7-inch and 10-inch tablets will appear on the market under a variety of brand names, though sharing the same core designs.
Though this is still a rumor without some sort of official notification from Nvidia or an OEM, there are a number of points that makes the story slightly more believable. The company was seen to be taking more control over its graphics card production for Best Buy in 2010, and has already demonstrated it is capable of creating an Android device for gaming in the form of Project Shield. This suggests that it could already have all the resources it needs in order to create the tablets, if the rumor does indeed turn out to be true.
