With their success in the white-box tablet market, China-based ARM chipmakers Rockchip and Allwinner Technology have started gaining attention from brand vendors worldwide with some first-tier brand vendors even considering adopting the solutions for their entry-level models, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Allwinner shipped more than 50 million chips in 2012 with 70% of the volume supplied to markets outside of China. Because its solution's price is only half that of global first-tier chipmakers, the company's share in the tablet market is expected to rise further in 2013.

Rockchip has successfully landed orders for HP's new 7-inch entry-level tablets, while Allwinner is currently still in negotiations with some first-tier brand vendors for orders.

Allwinner is currently offering its dual-core chip at a price of US$5, an upgraded dual-core model, priced at below US$10, and a quad-core chip, priced only half that of Nvidia's Tegra 3. Since Allwinner's quad-core solution does not have a large performance gap compared to Tegra 3, orders started growing in the second half of 2012 and are expected to continue staying strong in 2013.