The market for smartphone processors is worth nearly $8bn a year and, according to data from Strategy Analytics, it’s Qualcomm that’s benefiting the most with a 50% share of the market revenue.

The company’s Snapdragon processors have become almost ubiquitous to those within the industry, but to the general public they are unknown. Now, with increasing competition from the likes of Nvidia’s Tegra processors, Qualcomm wants to change this.

I’m not sure how long they’ve been running this campaign but I’ve started seeing Snapdragon advertising in consumer magazines and newspapers. The adverts push the benefits of Qualcomm’s technology in improving battery performance and speed. It’s all very reminiscent of Intel’s ‘Intel Inside’ campaigns in the PC market.

Whether the average consumer is ready for this though…I’m not sure. In a market still largely led by price and carrier marketing, the percentage of consumers who’ll factor the processor into their decision making must still be small. That’s not to say that it won’t become more important in the decision making process, but today (and outside of the OS) the average consumer remains largely unaware (even complacent) as to the inner workings of his smartphone.

As an industry we are world-class at believing consumers think in the same way as we do. Interesting to see how this plays out into the wider buying behavior of the next billion smartphone owners.

If this is going to work, Qualcomm is going to need to think further than simple advertising. There’s an entire value-chain that sits between it and the end-user, and it’s ready to corrupt the message.

As it stand today, how comfortable would you be walking into a retail store and asking about the relative performance of processor types and single-chip technology?