Despite the fact that Nvidia got AT&T certification for its Icera 410 modems it won’t rest until it gets a proper LTE capable modem.

The US market is nuts about LTE and it is crucial to have it for the future. Investors and analysts know that and they wanted to know how far along Nvidia got in the LTE department. Nvidia was kind to reveal that Icera 500, a full 100Mbits capable LTE modem is coming in 2013, nothing more precise than that.

It targets tablets, calm shelve devices as well as phones and it can support all worldwide frequencies. This modem should be ready in early 2013 and the chip itself might even be ready for the late part of 2012 but it probably won’t ship in devices until 2013.

However, the Tegra-meets- LTE chip, also known as Grey, is coming in 2013, probably in the second part of this year and will finally feature integrated LTE. This chip targets the mainstream market while Wayne Cortex A15, 28nm based Tegra 4 chip with Icera 500 modem will go after the high end market.

Before this happens in 2012 there should be some Tegra 3+ designs that will use LTE, but it’s not clear if Nvidia is using its own Icera modems or if it will use something from the competition. Nvidia is on a good road, but it’s a bumpy road. It is going against mobile giants such as Qualcomm and its impressive S4 chips, with Krait cores and onboard LTE.

We expect to see Icera 500 and Wayne chips in action next January.