Nvidia posted record Q3 results today on strong sales of its Tegra chips. The company earned $1.2 billion in revenue, up nearly 13% from the same quarter a year ago. Net income rose to $209 million, up 75% on the quarter and 17% from a year ago.
Not only is the company’s Kepler GPUs doing well in desktop and notebook computers, but company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that a third of revenue is attributable to “non-PC” chips such as the Tegra 3.
Tegra has had a big year in 2012. Despite a rough start with the questionable performance of the Tegra 2, the company managed to be the major provider for most Android tablets with its latest quad-core chip, the Tegra 3. It powers phones such as the international HTC One X (and upcoming HTC One X+ in Canada), the Nexus 7 and, most recently, the Surface RT tablet.
The company is expected to come out with its Cortex A15-based Wayne chips sometime between Q1 and Q3 2013, which will bring true competitiveness with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro chips and Samsung’s Exynos 5 line, which has already hit the market in the Nexus 10.
If you remember back to the pre-Nexus 7 days, Nvidia talked about bringing the prices of tablets down to the $199 mark; in doing so, they’ve managed to corner the chip market for slates. Despite these lower prices, the company’s gross margin was 52.9% for the quarter, and things are only looking stronger for Nvidia going forward.
