NVidia Tegra Processors and the Zune Saga

NVidia Tegra Processors are making it’s way to 50 gadgets, according to the graphics card leader. Leading this surge is Microsoft’s Zune HD who have already announced their high definition version of their Zune is using NVidia’s multi-core Tegra processor.

Zune was launched almost 2 years ago in the hopes of getting a music player out there, a vertical market for Microsoft. Almost all other vendors have realized that Apple was running away with all the money from a very successful iPod product and such is the launch of Microsoft. The software giant’s selling point was the price and the large disk capacity. While Apple was still hovering in the 16 GB capacity, Microsoft had their Zune at 4 GB, 8 GB, 30 GB and 80 GB. They had built a customized Zune by allowing consumers to order directly from Zune.net and have an art imprinted permanently at the back of the music player. Aside from that Microsoft built the Zune marketplace where users can download songs, they have inked a deal to have the highly successful TV series Heroes on their device. All these efforts have somehow allowed Microsoft to gain market share despite it’s late entry in the game. Today Microsoft is trying to be the first on the Zune product by putting in high definition abilities with the help of Tegra.

Senior analyst for mobile content at ABI research, Jeff Orr, says that NVidia is bringing power graphics to portable media players and he notes that this is a unique capability.

The power behind Zune is the combination of Microsoft, Zune, NVidia Tegra which brings together eight independent processors that provide users unparalleled high definition viewing of videos, flash and other media on it’s OLED touch screen. The Zune would remain slim amidst the power being put on it.

Mike Rayfield, general manager at NVidia says that Apple may have built a ery good SoC (System on Chip) but what they have on the iPod touch doesn’t come close to the power management and graphics that Tegra brings. He says they have benchmarked everything out there and the concluded they have the most powerful graphics card out there.

I am really excited with these things and I hope that Zune has the powerful abilities to sustain long hours of viewing on high definition.  The other thing I hope Microsoft does a good job on this is building a community of vendors that build accessories from cases, plugins, devices, that allow to extend the Zune device. When I first bought my Zune there was barely accessories to choose from and it was difficult to purchase one especially when you see Apple has a lot of these useless, I mean useful accessories out there.

Image from Zune.net