Since we are still waiting for 28nm graphics, we are slowly but surely shifting to chips and graphics on mobile phones and tablets and Qualcomm is definitely one of the key players in the market. This market segment saw tremendous growth over the last couple of years and the trend is continuing.

We managed to talk to Qualcomm about Windows Phone handsets and the fact that their chips power every single Windows phone on the market, more interestingly all of them are exclusively single cores.

Qualcomm says that Microsoft designed Windows Phone 7 to be very fast and fluid on single-core processors. We tried out some of HTC’s Mango phones, and we can confirm it. They are smooth as silk and the Zune inspired interface runs very fast on 1.2GHz single core Qualcomm S2 chips.

“Windows Phone devices are built around specific hardware requirements that drive consistent and high-quality end user experiences. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile processor and chip system software, which today ships in every Windows Phone device, is redefining mobility for consumers around the world by offering an unprecedented combination of mobile processing performance, rich multimedia, GPS, high-performance graphics, wireless connectivity and power efficiency,” claims Qualcomm.

For what it’s worth, we can confirm that single cores work well in all these tasks, and to back up what Ballmer said a few times, Windows Phone is simpler to use than Android, kind of more natural, as long as you like the user interface designed around tiles.

Despite this, dual-core processors will also make their way to Windows phones with future OS updates. Although single core processors are fully capable of running Windows Phone, it is hard to imagine Redmond will stick solely to single core chips for much longer. The sheer marketing value of having dual cores is a significant factor, since Apple and Android phone makers are already shifting to dual-core processors and consumers don’t mind paying a little extra for the latest spec, even if it is overkill at this point.