Futuremark has started development of 3DMark for Android, with the aim of bringing the industry standard gaming performance benchmark to Android powered tablets in 2012. Futurmark is inviting companies involved in the manufacture of Android powered devices to join Futuremark's Benchmark Development Program at http://www.futuremark.com/bdp/

Research groups such as Gartner and IDC are predicting explosive growth for tablets in the coming years. Undoubtedly games will be one of the key drivers of this growth as the performance and power of these lightweight devices improves. Fierce competition between Android devices means hardware manufacturers and their suppliers will need an objective, impartial and forward-looking performance reference to enable their engineers to deliver competitive products.

3DMark is a purpose built benchmark for measuring gaming performance. It uses bespoke workloads designed specifically to stress test graphics hardware and highlight bottlenecks in the system.

3DMark for Android will measure gaming performance using rendering, CPU and physics tests. It will feature real-time graphics pushing the OpenGL ES API to the limit and an online service will be provided to compare results between devices. Futuremark says that the results will be comparable with 3DMark for Windows 8.

The new benchmark is expected to be released in 2012.