Despite the rumors started by Reuters who stated that Texas instrument is giving up on the mobile market and halts the OMAP 5 development, TI is continuing to fight in this market, at least for another year. TI has a quite long gap between OMAP 4 and OMAP 5 but it is expected to see the OMAP 5 early next year.

The company thinks that slight speed bump of OMAP 4 parts that launched at 1.0GHz to 1.2GHz with very successful OMAP 4430 in Q1 2011 the got to 1.2 to 1.5GHz in Q4 2011 with OMAP 4460 can reach over 1.5GHz with OMAP 4470 that gets to launch with Archos tablets, Nook HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Mass availability of OMAP 4470 is expected in Q4 2012, the quarter we live since this is the timeframe when we expect the increased production of tablets based on OMAP 4 especially the new Kindle and Nook flavors.

Some people are even claiming that OMAP5 might be the first Cortex A15 chip to market, but somehow we think that Nvidia might beat them to it. We have a funny feeling that we might see both chips at CES and at the latest in early February 2013 at Barcelona based Mobile World Congress.

Despite the small delay TI and OMAP 5 still coming to market and we would be very surprised if we don’t see at least some major design wins. Texas Instruments is doing fine with design wins of the Barnes & Noble and for two consecutive years with Amazon Kindle tablets too, and we see that this partnership is here to stay, unless challenged by some offer from the competition that Amazon or Barnes & Noble could not resist.

It is quite certain that we will see at least a few OMAP 5 design wins in 2013, but we also reportedly heard that Texas Instruments will be late to market with its OMAP 4 and OMAP 5 based Windows 8 tablets and notebooks, mainly due to driver related issues.

There is no doubt that Qualcomm and Nvidia will fight for the crown in ARM market but let’s also don’t forget that two big ones Samsung and Apple make their own chip leaving a very tight space for fearsome competition. It remains to be seen if Texas Instruments continues to develop high performance mobile chips after OMAP 5 and has good parts for a competition with many quad and octa cores in 2013 and beyond.