Marvell Prepares Cheap Smartphone Chipset

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Marvell has showed off a new smartphone chipset platform, dubbed Pantheon, that Marvell hopes will bring about cheap, low-cost smartphones, roughly in the $100 range. Despite being cheap, Marvell hopes the chipsets will still offer excellent performance and full features like you’d find on other smartphones.

Marvell is currently keeping the specs on the Pantheon platform quiet, thought they’ll be at MWC showing the chipset to partners. What we do know is that it will be able to support up to a 800MHz ARM-style processor for applications. It can support dual processors, either of ARM or DSP processors for running the modem.

The Pantheon platform will also be able of running 720p video. Marvell promises that Pantheon devices could even be used for gaming, as the platform will support DirectX and OpenGL rendering. WiFi, Bluetooth and FM receivers will also have support in the platform. The operating systems of choice will be either Android or Windows Mobile.

Marvell co-founder Weili Dai said in the press release, “Marvell is delivering the platform for a $99 smartphone that provides instant access, live content, high performance 3D mobile gaming, rich HD media and a wealth of applications. That is what today’s ‘always-on consumers’ want.”

Could we be seeing a ‘cheap’ smartphone revolution? It’s no secret that smartphones can be a bit pricey. A few days ago, we saw ST-Ericsson release info on their platform for a sub-€100 ($136) smartphone, and now Marvell is showing off a similar platform. The appeal here is that these phones are cheap enough to likely be free from telcom providers with a two-year contract subsidy.

As said earlier, Marvell is sampling the platform to some ‘top-tier’ manufacturers. They’ll be showing off the tech at MWC next week. No word on when we can expect these in our phones.