Buh, I think this article has totally missed the point. First of all, I think the reason why the iPad and iPhone have been so good hardware-wise while most And

Buh, I think this article has totally missed the point. First of all, I think the reason why the iPad and iPhone have been so good hardware-wise while most Android devices have been lackluster in comparison is that the vertical integration that Apple can achieve allows them to make decisions at this point that would be completely stupid if they were just another OEM or IHV. Basically, because iOS is a very large ecosystem with a guaranteed large install base per product, Apple can afford to tape out chips that would have absolutely no chance of being profitable for a IHV (e.g., NVIDIA or Qualcomm). Since every iOS tablet sold for the next N years will use A5X, it makes sense for Apple to design and tape out their own SoCs specifically for that, but the device fragmentation inherent in the Android market makes it extremely difficult for IHVs to do the same. Look at A5X versus Tegra 3 in terms of die size. Tegra 3 is 80mm^2. A5X is 165mm^2. SoCs from IHVs (at least for the foreseeable future) need to be dual-purpose tablet/phone chips in order to deal the many devices the IHVs will need to target (differentiated using clockspeeds or binning), which means no huge die sizes allowed. Even if Android tablet sales increase to iPad levels overall, part of the reason for that is choice; OEMs probably won't be willing to use the same enormous processor in their $600 flagship as their $150 budget tablet due to their margins (or the chip wouldn't exist because IHVs wouldn't be able to make a profit at the cheaper levels because of the fab costs). Vertical integration also means Apple can eat the cost of large die size SoCs because they don't have to worry about margin on the SoCs alone. In other words, if bigger chips result in better experiences for tablets, right now the only way to guarantee that is to play kingmaker and only support one SoC. The way Apple has done that is to build their own SoCs and cut the IHVs out entirely. Yet, they haven't done this in PCs at all. PC hardware is all Good Enough at this point; there's no hypothetical 40%-perf-advantage-if-only-someone-would-build-it chip. As the mobile market matures, platforms become more established, OEMs combine, etc, the need for vertical integration will disappear because mobile hardware will become a commodity, largely indistinguishable in meaningful ways besides minor perf/W or perf/$ advantages. IHVs will see enough sales to do what Intel or the GPU companies do in the PC space and build one scalable architecture for all platforms, there will be relatively established price points, etc.