Integrated platforms are growing. ABI Research forecasts that the growth in smartphone application processors will come from integrated platforms that include the wireless connectivity baseband that supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and more. Integrated platforms without the wireless connectivity baseband and stand-alone application processors will still exist for various reasons that are covered in this analysis. Reference designs help mitigate a complete switch to integrated platforms, but the need to customize higher-end devices for product differentiation is an even more important factor that will keep stand-alone application processors from disappearing completely. These two trends – integration and reference designs – are absolutely critical for silicon vendors to compete in the smartphone space.