Mali, PowerVR, Adreno — who's actually inside your Android phone's GPU?

The GPU in an Android phone never gets a marketing label. Buyers know "Snapdragon" because Qualcomm puts that name on the chipset. They almost never know whether the GPU is Adreno or Mali or PowerVR, even though the choice has more impact on game performance than the CPU clock speed everyone obsesses over.

We pulled the GPU manufacturer field from every device in the Soft9 catalog. The market is more concentrated than the chipset market, and the long tail is weirder.

The headline numbers

Across 28,077 catalogged Android devices:

| GPU manufacturer | Devices | Share | |---|---:|---:| | ARM (Mali) | 14,734 | 52.5% | | Imagination Tech (PowerVR) | 5,666 | 20.2% | | Qualcomm (Adreno) | 5,334 | 19.0% | | NVidia (Tegra) | 65 | 0.2% | | Vivante (GC-series) | 47 | 0.2% | | Intel (HD Graphics) | 36 | 0.1% | | Samsung (Xclipse) | 19 | 0.07% | | AMD (RDNA) | 4 | 0.01% | | VideoCore (Broadcom) | 2 | 0.007% |

Three companies own 91.7% of the Android GPU market by device count. The fourth-place vendor, Nvidia, has 65 devices total — and most of them are Nvidia Shield-branded gaming hardware from a decade ago.

Why ARM dominates GPU when it doesn't dominate CPU

ARM (now technically Arm Holdings) doesn't make Android chipsets directly. They license the Mali GPU IP to other chipset designers — most importantly MediaTek, but also HiSilicon (Huawei's silicon arm), Unisoc, and many smaller Chinese chipset shops. Every chipset that pairs an ARM CPU core (Cortex-A series) with an ARM GPU is one more entry in the Mali column.

This is why Mali shows up in 52% of Android devices despite ARM not having a single phone with their name on it. They're inside every MediaTek Helio and Dimensity, every HiSilicon Kirin, every cheap unbranded chipset that ships in sub-$100 phones in Africa and India. That's a much bigger market by unit count than the flagship Snapdragon market.

Why Imagination Technologies (PowerVR) is at 20%

This number surprised us. Imagination Tech licenses the PowerVR GPU IP — most famously, it's what's inside Apple's iPhone GPUs (until Apple switched to in-house designs around the A11). On Android, PowerVR shows up in:

• MediaTek's older mid-range chipsets (MT6735, MT6753, MT6750-series) — extremely common in budget Android from 2015-2019.
• Some Allwinner and Rockchip TV-box and tablet chipsets, which is a chunk of the catalog you'd never think about.
• A handful of Spreadtrum / Unisoc cheap chipsets still shipping in the African/Indian budget market.

The 20% number is dominated by the long tail of cheap, older devices. PowerVR's share among phones released in 2024+ is much smaller — probably under 5%. But the catalog is cumulative.

Why Qualcomm Adreno is "only" 19%

Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets all use Qualcomm's in-house Adreno GPUs. Adreno's share of the GPU market roughly tracks Snapdragon's share of the chipset market, which we measured at about 19% of the catalog (see Snapdragon's share post).

Adreno punches above its weight in flagship devices. If you filter to phones released in 2023+ and priced over $400, Adreno's share is more like 60-70%, because most flagship Android phones use Snapdragon 8-series chipsets. But across the full catalog including budget and tablet devices, it's a 1-in-5 GPU.

The interesting outliers

Nvidia Tegra (65 devices). Nvidia tried to break into mobile chipsets in the early 2010s with Tegra 2, 3, and 4. Most of those phones (HTC One X, LG Optimus 4X HD, etc.) are catalog history. The Tegra GPU share today is dominated by Nvidia Shield TV / Tablet (still in the catalog), a few automotive Android infotainment systems, and legacy phones from the early 2010s. Nvidia's Tegra division never broke into mainstream Android phones.

Vivante (47 devices). Vivante was acquired by VeriSilicon in 2015. Their GC-series GPUs showed up in some Freescale (now NXP), Marvell, and Allwinner SoCs. The Android devices in the catalog using Vivante GPUs are mostly ultra-budget tablets and set-top boxes from 2014-2018.

Intel HD Graphics (36 devices). Intel tried mobile (Atom-based Android phones, the Asus ZenFone 2 era around 2014-2015). They lost. The 36 catalog entries are the wreckage.

Samsung Xclipse (19 devices). This is new and small but worth watching. Samsung partnered with AMD to put RDNA-based Xclipse GPUs in their Exynos 2200 and 2400 chipsets, used in the Galaxy S22/S23/S24 in some regions. The 19-device count reflects how few SKUs that's been used in. If Samsung commits to in-house Exynos for the S25/S26, this number grows fast.

AMD RDNA standalone (4 devices). Surprising to see AMD as its own manufacturer field. These are likely a handful of Samsung devices where the catalog tagged the GPU as AMD instead of Samsung. Edge case, but interesting that it shows up at all — AMD has effectively no direct presence in mobile.

Broadcom VideoCore (2 devices). This is what was inside the original Raspberry Pi. The two devices in the catalog are probably very old budget Android tablets that used Broadcom SoCs.

What this means for app developers

If you're shipping a 3D-accelerated Android app:

• Test on at least one Mali device, one PowerVR device, and one Adreno device. These three GPUs have different driver implementations of OpenGL ES and Vulkan. Bugs that work on Adreno (the assumption-default for many developers using a Pixel as their dev device) often fail on Mali or PowerVR.
• Adreno drivers are the most "Khronos-spec-compliant." Code that just works on Adreno may behave differently on Mali (especially older Mali-T-series) or PowerVR (especially the older 5XT and 6XT series).
• Mali GPUs are the most diverse generation-wise. A Mali-G77 in a 2021 flagship is very different from a Mali-G52 in a 2020 budget phone. Don't assume "Mali == one performance class."

If you're a buyer:

• The GPU brand isn't on the marketing materials, but you can usually look up the chipset and figure out what's inside. The device pages on this site list the GPU manufacturer and model.
• For mobile gaming, Adreno > Mali > PowerVR is roughly the performance order at any given price point. There are exceptions (newer high-end Mali-G7x is genuinely fast) but as a rule of thumb it holds.

Why the GPU market is more concentrated than the CPU market

The CPU market has Snapdragon, MediaTek, Exynos, Kirin, Unisoc, plus a long tail. The GPU market has three players. The reason: GPU IP is much harder to design than CPU IP. ARM, Imagination, and Qualcomm spent decades building it. The barriers to entry are higher than for cores. New chipset designers buy GPU IP rather than design their own.

The exception is Apple, which started with PowerVR and built in-house. Samsung is trying to do the same with the AMD partnership. Nobody else has the silicon-design budget to attempt it.

— Marcus