
Smartbooks, netbooks and eventually desktops
ARM CEO Warren East believes the company's chips could
eventually power the majority of netbooks, despite the fact that they
cannot run desktop versions of Windows.
In an interview with
PCPro,
East said ARM's market share would see a dramatic increase once
performance reaches new levels and that it could soon become the
dominant architecture in netbooks.
"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. In other words, ARM could me the dominant processor supplier in the PC market, but only if East's optimistic predictions materialize.
ARM faces an uphill struggle against Intel, as its chips lack x86
support. Hence, they are unable to run desktop Windows, and Microsoft
won't change this anytime soon.
“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," said East, adding that there
are no technical barriers to making desktop versions of Windows run on
ARM chips.
More
here.