If ARM has its way, then it will hold 40% of the notebook market by 2015.
Until recently, there was a pretty clear distinction between x86 and ARM architectures. Today, it is more and more apparent that Intel is moving downstream and ARM has clear intentions to go upstream, which sets the two on a direct collision course. Neither company has a clear-cut advantage at this time and we enjoy our front-row seats to witness yet another fierce processor war between two aggressive players that aren’t willing to surrender ground without a brutal fight.
ARM CEO Tudor Brown has just been quoted stating that the company expects to claim a 40% stake in the notebook market by 2015. Yes, that would be notebooks, not netbooks (which has been a failed adventure for ARM so far.) ARM is counting on a strong consumer pick-up of Windows 8 for ARM. By 2015, ARM also expects to hold 85% of the tablet market and, due to the anticipated growth in notebooks, 50% of the overall mobile market (excluding smartphones).
There is a certain creepy confidence in ARM’s most recent statements. ARM is quite obviously dancing around Intel and making lots of noise. We aren’t sure if that is incredibly dumb or a clever strategy that aims to provoke a reaction. 1.85 billion ARM processors may have sold in Q1 of this year, but ARM is a fly on the wall in terms of revenue. The company will take in about $700 million this year, while Intel is in the $40 – $45 billion range. ARM may be more nimble and it may have the overall advantage in the small mobile devices market right now, but teasing Intel in its core market has not worked well for any rival in the past. Arrogance in the wrong place can end up in catastrophic results. Just ask AMD.
ARM Cortex-A 15Of course, Intel is just getting an answer to what it has dished out earlier. The company said back in 2008 that Atom is designed to move down into a market that is dominated by ARM and take over a fragmented processor market by unifying it with x86 architecture. Neither Intel nor ARM were able to leave their core market so far: ARM has not gained any ground in the mobile PC market, while Intel products are non-existent in smartphones and tablets. However, we are aware that both companies are positioning their armies. Intel’s move into the tablet market has been widely reported and we hear that the company has sent out its engineers to work with device vendors to design tablets based on Intel hardware designs. The messages we are getting are very conflicting: While Intel is pushing the tablet message, we also hear that the company is putting much more focus on the traditional notebook and a device category that may bridge the gap between the tablet and the notebook – which would be the ultrabook. Somehow it seems that this whole Intel tablet message isn’t quite flushed out yet.
ARM, on the other hand, is brave to announce that it wants 40% of the notebook market. Sure, we know that those predictions aren’t worth the bandwidth the transmission of those words requires, but it is this strange confidence at ARM that gets us thinking. Brown could be simply suicidal by challenging Intel, but we think he may have reasons to be confident. To be successful with a Windows 8 notebook, ARM will need something much more powerful than what he has right now. Nvidia’s upcoming quad-core Tegra platform is promising, but we are looking much more toward AMD, which may have an opportunity to directly attack its arch-rival by partnering with ARM. There are persistent industry rumors that AMD is already working with ARM, either by offering its graphics technology or by adopting ARM as a processor architecture for tablet and smartphone devices. If that is the case, Intel’s ARM problem may suddenly be a much bigger concern for the blue team. Could Brown be telling us that he has a few aces up his sleeve? Possibly.
We still think it is a misguided strategy to put those market forecasts out. They have been off for ARM in the recent past and they are likely to be off in the future as well. What ARM has achieved, however, is to attract the attention of Intel, which recently said that it “will command the respect of ARM”, according to Tom’s Hardware. Intel may not have had the best designs for smartphones and tablets yet, and it may have failed to bring a competitive Moorestown platform to market, but we know that there are virtually endless resources with an intimidating production technology that Intel can leverage, if it has to – especially if it is threatened in its core market. For ARM, It will take more than just words to take those 40% of the notebook market.
Given its support by heavyweights such as Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia and possibly AMD in the future, ARM has powerful partners in place that clearly can have a big impact on Intel’s market dominance. It is too early to make any calls on this battle, but we anticipate the clash to be sudden and hard. This will be an exciting phase of innovation for consumers with rapid technology progress. We surely won’t complain about that.
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