Nvidia ‘Grey’ LTE processor pushed back to 2013

Nvidia announced its earnings for the first quarter of the year today, and it certainly had a lot to brag about. The company brought in $924 million in revenue, out of which it squeezed a healthy $60 million profit. In addition, it became even more bullish about the immediate road ahead, projecting a $1.05 billion sales figure for the second quarter, up from a previous estimate of $990 million. But speaking of Nvidia’s future, it also had some disappointing news to relay during the quarterly report.

That news is that the company’s highly anticipated Tegra processor that will contain built-in connectivity to 4G LTE networks will not be available until 2013. It had previously said that the processor would be ready later this year. Code-named “Grey,” it was to be Nvidia’s answer to rivals like the Snapdraggon chips from Qualcomm. But the good news is that LTE isn’t going away any time soon, and Qualcomm is also facing supply problems so it won’t be too much of an issue to catch up.

“Looking forward, you’ll see Tegra 3 LTE phones with partners’ baseband processors in the second half of this year and then next year with our own LTE baseband processors as well,” said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang during today’s call. Apparently, phones powered with Grey might not even be available until the end of 2013, so Nvidia certainly does have its work cut out for it.

[via Seeking Alpha]