ARM to Challenge Intel's Dominance in Notebooks

News
By Douglas Perry
published

Market research firm IHS believes that Intel's 30-year processor dominance in notebooks may get serious competition from ARM.

By 2015, ARM will have captured a notebook share of 23%, IHS predicts.

“Starting in 1981, when IBM first created its original PC based on Intel’s 8088 microprocessor, the X86 architecture has dominated the PC market,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst of compute platforms for IHS. “Over the next generation, billions of PCs were shipped based on X86 microprocessors supplied by Intel and assorted rivals - mainly AMD. However, the days of X86’s unchallenged domination are coming to an end as Windows 8 opens the door for the use of the ARM processor, which already has achieved enormous popularity in the mobile phone and tablet worlds.”

By 2015, ARM notebook shipments will hit 74 million units, up from an estimated 7.6 million in 2012, according to IHS. Windows 8 is predicted to be the major driver of ARM notebook sales. Microsoft announced last January that Windows 8 will also be running on ARM systems. IHS believes that ARM will be most successful in the value notebook space and devices that cost less than $700. ARM chip suppliers will include Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

Douglas Perry
23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Till then AMD LLano APU will dominate the entry-level or midrange (
    Reply
  • Tyler-767
    I don't think ARM will have much of an effect on Intel's market share. I think ARM will be taking its piece of the pie from AMD. ARM is going into AMD's territory with low price "best bang for the buck" segments. If bulldozer cant compete with a high end ivy bridge chip, ARM will eat away at entry level AMD just as Intel's graphics cores are eating away at entry level Nvidia.
    Reply
  • bustapr
    I think that by the end of 2012 AMD will have eaten up quite a big part of intels share with its llano platform. Its already getting alot of attention and notebook makers will be stupid to not see the profits in llano. I really cant see ARM doing anything yet since theyre practically invisible outside the mobile market. We cant make any predictions on ARM yet. And even if they fair well against intel CPUs, the llano platform is too much for its competitors to compete with in the low-mid range market.
    Reply
  • JAYDEEJOHN
    Whats going to give the gfx power here? Intel?
    Reply
  • techseven
    Wow this is so interesting that I have decided to go to bed right away...
    Reply
  • burnley14
    I'm all for it since it will certainly bring costs down. Intel is now pushing a CPU performance envelope that doesn't really need to expand. Greater GPU power is the future of the mobile market, CPU's are powerful enough to do just about anything as-is. Perhaps Intel's days are numbered. . .
    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    Maybe we'll have a stiff three-way competition in the lower range where all three companies have introduced low-power, thin-profile processors.

    As for ARM's ability to compete in the mid/high-range segment, that's still an unknown factor.

    Let's just hope that benchmarks won't artificially cap ARM CPU's performance like it does with AMD.
    Reply
  • henydiah
    wow cool
    Reply
  • fyasko
    by 2015 will we have flying cars? will lady gaga turn back into michael jackson?
    Reply
  • back_by_demand
    Not entirely surprising, the performance of chips is increasing faster than the amount of resources required to run software.

    With the exception of games where graphical requirements has become a nuclear arms race, ordinary software certainly doesn't follow the Moore's Law, so we have got to the point where entry level products are now capable of running what used to be fairly hefty programs.

    The only way Intel is going to wrestle this back is if they can influence software vendors to bloat up their new releases year on year to match their new CPUs.

    Won't happen, so then Intel has to convince us to buy their products on the same playing field as everyone else and charge less money.
    Reply