Numbers published by Imagination Technologies suggests the number of mobile handsets sporting OpenGL ES 3.0 conformant GPUs could hit 1 billion per annum.

The declaration, the company claims, is part of a wider drive by smartphones to reach the same performance levels as their console cousins.

Indeed, Imagination - itself behind the PowerVR range of GPUs – states SoCs (system on a chip) capable of supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 should begin to ship by mid-2013.

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By the following year, Khronos' API subset should be a "significant and growing part of a billion unit market by 2014."

"The future of graphics is mobile," said VP of marketing at Imagination, Tony King-Smith.

"Khronos' OpenGL ES 3.0 is a significant step forward for mobile and embedded graphics, bringing mobile platforms another step closer to performance and feature set parity with traditionally more capable desktops and consoles.

"The widespread adoption by semiconductor manufacturers and developers has made our PowerVR family the GPU technology of choice for mobile application development. We are excited by this next phase of mobile GPU which will blur the boundaries between mobile and traditional high end graphics platforms."