It was said on Thursday by a company official, it’s been nearly a year of demonstrations and talk but Nvidia’s low-power Tegra chips will shortly come into sight in mobile devices.

Due to launch is Microsoft’s Zune HD portable multimedia device, this will be the initial device consumer device to have the Tegra chip. We first heard about these chips middle of last year. A combination of better battery life, internet access and advanced graphics are in the Tegra-based devices.

Tegra APX 2600 chip, which has a GeForce graphics core, Arm11-based processor core and other components will power the Zune HD. Specialised cores are also in the chip which encode and decode high-def video. This will allow the Zune HD to play 720p HD video. Mobile Internet devices, smartphones , netbooks and smartbooks are also Tegra-based, they will come to light later this year.

Carriers will mainly offer smartbooks. A mobile Internet device has already been demonstrated priced at $99 and Samsung plans to use Tegra in a forthcoming netbook. New Tegra chips are being planned for next year that allows twice as much performance. Revenue of $776.5 million for the 2nd fiscal quarter was reported last week this is a fall from $892.6 million throughout the same time last year.

The Apple iPod Touch cannot play 720p high-definition video but the Zune HD, that is the first to have the Tegra chip, will be able to do this. Apple is currently in lead position in the media player market, so is this enough to dethrone them of that position? Nvidia will have to contend with Apple’s strong iTunes and iPod content infrastructure.

Source – pcworld.com