Report: ARM aims to take 20% of notebook PC market

Peter Clarke

LONDON – Warren East, CEO of processor IP licensor ARM Holdings plc, has said he expects companies making processors based on the ARM cores will take between 10 and 20 percent of the notebook PC market in 2014 or 2015, according to a Dow Jones report. That would be much higher penetration than Intel would make into the smartphone market, the report also quoted East saying.

Processor architectures from Intel, known for performance, and from ARM, known for power efficiency, have dominated in PCs and mobile phones, respectively, for many years. Now the two companies are starting to make inroads into the other's traditional home turf. While Intel supplies chips and does much to define system architecture, ARM licenses the processor core to chip making partners and leaves them to work with OEMs.

While ARM aspires to get between 10 and 20 percent of the notebook PC market by 2014 or 2015 ARM expects Intel will have some success in smartphone but only achieve about 5 to 10 percent penetration of the smartphone market, the report said. "It's going to be quite hard for Intel to be much more than just one of several players. But they'll be a perfectly credible player," the report quoted East as saying.

In the PC market East argued that ARM-based processors will be lower cost than those coming from Intel. ARM processor suppliers are used to receiving about $20 for a chip going into a smartphone. Even if they increased the price to about $25 as they tailor their chips' features to address PCs, this would provide stiff competition to Intel, which has commanded prices of $80 to $200 for its processor chips, the reported quoted East as saying.