"Windows remains committed to the ARM platform," a Microsoft spokesman told CNET. "We are looking forward to new ARM-based Windows devices that will launch later this year."

Amazon, Sony and Nvidia are emerging as potential customers who will replace Apple as key buyers of Samsung Electronics' semiconductors, sources said Tuesday.

A lack of new licensing agreements triggered a 7% fall in adjusted pre-tax profits last financial year, and analysts have suggested that the company, whose designs are used to make graphics-processing chips used in mobile devices, could be volnerable to increased competition from US rivals Qualcomm and Nvidia.

Nvidia on Tuesday said it would begin licensing its GPU cores and "visual computing" patent portfolio to device manufacturers - a new business model for the company. The technology could appear in a full range of products from phones to supercomputers, with products likely emerging in 2015.

SanDisk has announced that the iNAND Extreme Embedded Flash Drive (EFD) supports tablet reference designs based on the Nvidia Tegra 4.