Q&A: Overthrowing Intel’s netbook dominance

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 28 Jul 2009 at 15:48

ARM's director of mobile computing explains why Intel wants out of netbooks

Processor designer ARM is one of Britain's biggest – yet low profile – technology companies. Founded in Cambridge, its processors power the majority of the world's smartphones including the iPhone and Palm Pre, as well as anything with a Nokia, Samsung or Sony Ericsson badge on the front.

The company's been hugely successful in the low-cost, low-power market and now it's looking to take that success to the world of netbooks – bringing it into direct competition with semiconductor super-power Intel.

Speaking exclusively to PC Pro, ARM's director of mobile computing Bob Morris explains why he thinks it's time for Intel to start looking over its shoulder.

Q Intel dominates the netbook market with Atom. How do you plan to change that?

A The Asus Eee PC opened a door and made people realise that these low-powered PCs worked for them, but that isn't actually a good market for Intel. It's in a position now where what it's used to on a [profit] margin level, despite all those sales, has been cannibalised. Intel is looking at this market as a billion dollars of lost opportunity and it can't stand that quarter after quarter. It's in Intel's best interests to push customers upwards to more expensive chips, which is why it won't allow screens bigger than 10.1in on these netbooks.

Q How does ARM take advantage of this?

The large OEMs want to take Atom and expand outside of the netbook area, and are being told they can't

A The large OEMs want to take Atom and expand outside of the netbook area, and are being told they can't. It's a good opportunity for ARM because we give them the chips, but then they're free to go innovate just like they do on PCs and smartphones. We'll have parts out there for $20 and then Intel's [Atom is] competing with sub-$200 systems.

Q Where's the profit for companies creating devices that cheaply?

A If you get to that level, there's no value in the device anymore. They stop being computers you use to put games on and become a ramp to the internet, or a ramp to video. That means the guys who are selling them need to start looking at services to back them up. We've seen that with those apps stores, that's where the sales are.

Q How disappointed were you that Windows 7 didn't support ARM?

A Windows 7 on ARM is not a technical problem, it's a business problem. If you've got a major operating system, not even considering the legacy stuff, and think about all the stuff that has to be ported over to a new architecture, it's a major financial commitment. Microsoft as a company really needs a reason to make that financial commitment, and we believe it's close to that commitment.

Q How close?

A I can't comment on what Microsoft's going to do, but by 2013 we believe we'll have 75% of this [portable devices, HDTVs and set-top boxes] market and if Microsoft doesn't support us, it's going to be missing a very big slice of the pie. Adobe made a very big decision to optimise Flash Player 10 for ARM. It had to be totally rewritten and there was a 180 engineers working on it real hard. It was a massive financial commitment, but Adobe saw the eyeballs were on mobile content and had to keep up. Microsoft's facing the same situation. The pressure's getting to the point where it's going to have to be agnostic.