During Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona next week, chip maker Marvell will show off their new Pantheon 910 and 920 chips which apparently could revolutionise smartphones and bring in an era of a $99 Android smartphone, reports an article over on electricpig.

Apparently Marvell believes that Pantheon powered smartphones could handle all the power of a smartphone operating system for far cheaper than before, so much so Weili Dai, the vice-president of Marvell has said it “makes the vision of a $99 smartphone very real.”

Vivek Chhabra, the head of mobile cellular business for Marvell has said that although Marvell was agnostic towards smartphone platforms and would welcome Windows mobile phones running their new technology, he envisaged Android sand open source OS’s benefiting from it.

Chhabra also said the Pantheon chip phones will be able to support HD video playback, screens up to WVGA, and 3D gaming. Marvell has yet to announce any partners involved but do say “top tier” names are involved.