Nvidia predicts Android tablets will outsell Apple's iPad within three years

Co-founder says Google platform will dominate by 2015

Tablets using Android will outsell Apple's iPad line by 2014, according to predictions by Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and chief executive of Nvidia.

Speaking at a Reuters Technology Summit, Huang said that he based his prediction on the smartphone market, where Android has displaced Symbian to take the majority share.

"The Android phone took only two and a half years to achieve the momentum that we're talking about. I would expect the same thing on Honeycomb tablets," said Huang, Reuters reports.

The growth in Android systems is excellent news for Nvidia, he said, since many of the tablets being sold are running the company's Tegra 2 processor, including the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola Xoom.

However, analysts report that Apple still has a dominant lead in the market. The iPad 2 is selling well, and an upgraded replacement is rumoured to be coming up for release by the end of the year.

Nvidia updated the Tegra dual-core processor line at CES in January, but Huang also gave details of the company's forthcoming quad-core processor, codenamed Kal-El. The first chips are so impressive, particularly at high resolution graphics, that Nvidia has already signed up several large customers, he said.

"It's got to be at least 10. We have five major phone companies and we have five major PC [manufacturers]," he said.

However, Huang did not say whether the new processor will contain any of the elements described in Project Denver, a co-development deal with ARM to build a system-on-a-chip integrating the two company's technologies.