Bangalore, March 1 3013:  As Indian cellular service providers  increase their offerings in the 3G and 4G space,  many  customers are  graduating  to handsets from multiple makers, that share a common processing platform – Qualcomm’s Snapdragon family.  Earlier this year, the company introduced a new tiered structure to the Snapdragon brand (Snapdragon 800/600/400/200 Processors) for what was hitherto known as Snapdragon  S1, S2, S3, S4 . The S4 family   has already found its way beneath the hood of some topline smartphones launched in India – like Nokia’s Lumia family, where the S4 Plus fuels  the Lumia 920 – and HTC’s Butterfly which runs on S4Pro.

These phones are able to bring superior graphics capability to their  HD screens thanks  Qualcomm’s Adreno graphics processor range, even while porting heterogenous operating systems  like Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry BB.  The Snapdragon family is also fuelling a new generation of tablets  running on Android or Windows 8  and bringing new, powerful  graphics richness  to such devices: a reference design using the S4Pro APQ8064 processor drew a lot of attention at the Vision Summit of the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association in Bangalore last month,  with its ability to stream 6 separate channels of HD video at the same time.

The new Snapdragon  processor families straddle the  application spectrum:
Snapdragon 800 Processors are designed  very fast apps and web browsing,  high end graphics, seamless communications virtually anytime, anywhere, and long battery life for premium smartphones, Smart TVs, digital media adapters and tablets.
Snapdragon 600 Processors are designed to deliver  high performance for, fast web browsing, seamless connectivity and good battery life for mid-high tier smartphones and tablets.
Snapdragon 400 Processors are designed to deliver the performance, features, connectivity and battery life that consumers expect in high volume smartphones and tablets.
Snapdragon 200 Processors are designed to deliver a valued balance of performance, robust connectivity and better battery life for entry level smartphones.  

Over 55 designs are  in development using Snapdragon 800 processors; 40+ designs in development using Snapdragon 600 processors.. any many of them were on show last week at  the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  In India Snapdragon fuels  affordable smartphones like Micromax A57 Ninja,  Lava Xolo A5003 and the  Karbonn Smart Titanium  in the price band of Rs  5000 – Rs 10,000.

More on  the new Snapdragon families  here