ARM: 90% of PCs may be netbooks in coming years
updated 05:00 pm EST, Wed February 3, 2010
ARM wants to power netbook PCs in the future
Chipmaker ARM believes netbooks will make up 90 percent of the PC market, according to the company's chief executive Warren East. ARM is the biggest competitor to Intel's Atom CPUs in the netbook market, and East believes the company will not rely on Windows support in order to be successful. In a typical netbook, the main chip is usually an Intel or AMD device, with two or three ARM microprocessors for features such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and East says ARM is trying to change that.
East admits that if ARM chips had Windows support, it would speed up when ARM chips could power netbooks. Still, with Linux-based operating systems growing so rapidly, East believes ARM will still achieve its goals.
Apple's recently introduced iPad is symbolic of the change as it uses an ARM processor despite its large, netbook-sized screen. Many smartphones depend on ARM, as do upcoming smartbooks like the Lenovo Skylight. [via PCPro]
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Joined: Nov 2008
It sounds like scary times ahead for the
Windows regime. It think it might be somewhat easy to sway the consumer market away from Windows, but those corporate Microsoft loyalists probably won't budge. It's not easy to teach old Microsoft Windows dogs new tricks. They'll somehow manage to keep all that legacy stuff going until Microsoft completely packs it in.