NVIDIA was full of news today. First they announced that the NVIDIA Icera 410 LTE multimode data modem chipset had been tested and validated for operation on the AT&T 4G LTE network. Then, in the company’s annual investor meeting today, Nvidia GM Mike Rayfield, revealed quite a bombshell: 30 quad-core Tegra 3 smartphones by the end of 2012!

That’s a lot of smartphones in general, but 30 quad-core Tegra 3 devices in half a year’s time is astonishing. The insane part about it is, almost half of them will be budget phones! Say what? Tegra 3 budget phones? It’s going to be one hell of a summer!

It won’t be long before NVIDIA becomes a real challenger to Qualcomm, especially now that NVIDIA has a certified LTE modem — not to mention the i500 which they claim “will have next-gen LTE speeds beyond what we’ve seen thus far.” Of course we won’t see the i500 until next year but again: 30 quad-core Tegra 3 smartphones by the end of 2012!

Okay, so 30 smartphones will probably equate to a few spread across each region, but still, it’s great to see NVIDIA pushing forward the way they are. I can’t wait to see what they have to offer come Q3.

• SourceThe Verge