
Google readies its own chip for future Pixels and Chromebooks - rbanffy
https://www.axios.com/scoop-google-readies-its-own-chip-for-future-pixels-chromebooks-e5f8479e-4a38-485c-a264-9ef9cf68908c.html
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est31
In the north american phone market, Google has 2.3% market share. The other
two vendors with their custom chips have 55% (Apple) and 26% (Samsung) and are
market leaders globally as well. Globally, Google's market share is even
worse. They certainly have the capital and manpower to design chips, but as
selling phones and chromebooks isn't such a great priority for Google, they
might not pour as much money into it as Apple so the resulting performance
might be disappointing. Furthermore, no matter the amount of money spent, they
likely won't it get back unless they start licensing the SoC but for that to
work it has to be much better than the alternatives.

Overall, with Moore's law dying, there _will be_ a trend towards more and more
vendors building custom chips, but that's a rather long term trend and I think
Google is a bit early for it. From a strategic point of view though it does
make sense because it gives Google a foot in the door, seats on committees,
etc., giving Google both information as well as influence. But I wouldn't be
surprised if the project gets cancelled in 3 years.

