Nvidia founder Jen-Hsun Huang has said that his company is making a shift from making only PC-based products to one that makes chips for smartphones and tablet devices as well.

"We used to be a PC graphics company — only PCs, only graphics," the New York Times reported quoting Huang.

"We have reinvented Nvidia."

The chipmaker’s latest product, the Tegra 2, is designed for mobile phones. The chip is based on the architecture from ARM Holdings and powers the Droid X2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The NYT said that Huang plans to make the dependence of Nvidia and Android like Intel has with Windows PCs.

Huang said, "We are well positioned to go after a market opportunity that is sixfold the market opportunity of the Nvidia you knew from the past."

While the tablet and smartphone markets have been growing at a rapid pace, the PC market is slowing.

In March this year, research firm Gartner had to lower its PC unit forecast for 2011 and 2012 to 387.8 million units, or 10.5% growth, from an earlier projection of 15.9% growth.

Gartner expects worldwide PC shipments in 2012 to reach 440.6 million units. This is a 13.6% increase from 2011, but less than Gartner’s previous forecast of 14.8%.

The two factors that are responsible for the revision, Gartner said, are the rising enthusiasm for alternative devices such as tablet computers and the limitations of the mobile PC which have not been addressed over years. Power back-up is a prime handicap as today’s consumers are active on social networking sites all the time.

Consumers are also increasingly adopting a "wait and see" approach toward PCs as this many manufacturers have unveiled plans of launching new tablet devices this year.

Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal said the reduction in demand for PCs are a result of a slowdown in China mobile PC market, but it also highlights a loss in consumer enthusiasm for mobile PCs.

Atwal said, "These results reflect marked reductions in expected near-term unit growth based on expectations of weaker consumer mobile PC demand, in no small part because of the near-term weakness expected in China’s mobile PC market, but also because of a general loss in consumer enthusiasm for mobile PCs."

Gartner research director George Shiffler said, "We expect growing consumer enthusiasm for mobile-PC alternatives, such as the iPad and other media tablets, to dramatically slow home mobile-PC sales, especially in mature markets."

Shiffler said, "We once thought that mobile PC growth would continue to be sustained by consumers buying second and third mobile PCs as personal devices."

"However, we now believe that consumers are not only likely to forgo additional mobile PC buys but are also likely to extend the lifetimes of the mobile PCs they retain as they adopt media tablets and other mobile PC alternatives as their primary mobile device."