One of the main beneficiaries of Android's exponential growth in mobile devices has been Nvidia, whose third-quarter revenue reached a record high of $1.2 billion this year. Some 30 percent of the company's income is now derived from the provision of "non-PC" chips, primarily Tegra systems-on-chip, which have figured in some of 2012's highlight devices like HTC's One X and Google's Nexus 7. Nvidia has already secured a firm foothold for itself in the Windows RT tablet space as well, providing the processor for Microsoft's Surface RT and others, though growth in that segment has already been strong. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang notes that the company's "tablet business grew 100% year-over-year."

For a chip designer that until recently only concerned itself with things you could solder or plug into motherboards, Nvidia's transformation has been dramatic. Three years ago, only 7 percent of its revenue came from outside the PC enclosure, whereas today the company is among the leaders in driving the shift to mobile devices. In Huang's own words, the total addressable market (TAM) for PCs is "being eaten by tablets. And the reason for that is because a great tablet is surely better than a cheap PC."