We wouldn’t run a blog called The Smartbook Blog if we didn’t think there was a huge future in affordable, portable and connected computing – but even we struggle to see quite this level of dominance…
Speaking to PC Pro, ARM CEO Warren East has outlined the company’s radical vision of the future PC market in an interesting interview.
“Although netbooks are small today – maybe 10% of the PC market at most – we believe over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market,” said East. “We see those products as an area for a lot of innovation and we want that innovation to be happening around the ARM architecture.”
“Let’s say you go and buy a laptop today,” he continued. “You’ll find the application processor is an Intel device or an AMD device. Typically you’ll also be buying two or three ARM microprocessors. Chances are it’s an ARM in the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. More often than not there’s an ARM in the hard disk drive and sometimes there’s an ARM in the integrated camera as well. Not to mention the ARM that’s in the printer that you may or may not have bought to go with it. Right now there’s only one microprocessor in the PC that probably isn’t ARM and that’s the applications processor. Certainly what we’re talking about over the next few years – particularly with netbooks, not with PCs – is the opportunity for those to be ARM.”
Of course, ARM is already heavily involved in the smartbook space where its instruction set is a central cog in the products produced so far by Qualcomm and Nvidia – with the likes of Texas Instruments, Freescale, Marvell and now Apple also set to get in on the act. Still, East recognizes one major challenge remains for the immediate future:
“If we were to wake up tomorrow and find Windows support for ARM, it would certainly accelerate ARM penetration in that space,” he admitted. “What’s holding it back is people’s love of the Microsoft operating system and that fact that it’s familiar and so on. But actually the trajectory of progress in the Linux world is very, very impressive. I think it’s only a matter of time for ARM to gain market share with or without Microsoft. [In the meantime] There’s not really a huge amount of point in us knocking on Microsoft’s door. Microsoft knows us very well, it’s worked with us for the past 12 years, all its mobile products are based on ARM.”
Could ARM designs, and consequently smartbooks, eventually be supported by Windows?
“It’s really an operational decision for Microsoft to make,” he added. “I don’t think there’s any major technical barriers. Microsoft’s well aware of the technical support we can provide to them, but it is an operational challenge for them, and one that only they can work out. We can’t really help them with it.”
So is Intel, and its vested interest in the Atom-based netbook market, the real reason pressure is applied on Microsoft not to support ARM? “Maybe…,” he concluded. “But Microsoft has to run Microsoft, not Intel.”
So small form factor netbooks/smartbooks powered by ARM-based chips are going to take over the world and Intel and Microsoft can either get onboard or be run over in the stampede? I’d suggest things are not so clear cut. That said, in an increasingly mobile world, an organization routed first in mobile technology and pitching fundamentally mobile products should certainly prove an increasingly powerful opponent to software and hardware makers who grew up around the desktop.
Let the battle commence!
Gordon
