ARM Exec Says 90% of PC Market Could Be Netbooks

Barence writes "ARM chief executive Warren East has claimed that netbooks could dominate the PC market, in an exclusive interview with PC Pro. 'Although netbooks are small today – maybe 10% of the PC market at most – we believe over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market,' he said. East also said ARM isn't pressuring Microsoft to include support for its processors in Windows, claiming progress in the Linux world is 'very, very impressive.' 'There's not really a huge amount of point in us knocking on Microsoft's door,' he said. 'It's really an operational decision for Microsoft to make. I don't think there's any major technical barriers.'"

Comments

Key message, "No operational barrier"

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What it means is, "If Microsoft is willing to buy, we are ready to sell out."

OMAP and other SoC

[DrYak]

But remember, netbooks are optimized for the net and only the net. If you want to do anything else mildly processor intensive like watching a HD video, good luck.

Modern ARM processor, such as the hyper popular OMAP serires or the nVidia Tegra do have this luck !

The OMAP package comes packed with SIMD extensions, a DSP unit, and a GPU (from PowerVR) including a core supporting hardware video decoding.
The Tegra is a multi-core ARM Cortex A9 (like the OMAP-4 generation) which, among other stuff, packs a freaking GPU from freaking nVidia.

Thank to this, most netbooks (powered by OMAPs) can currently (or will once Tegra hit the market) play HD video.

If you want to watch a DVD, good luck--your netbook is probably a little too small for that DVD drive!

What's the point of using a small device if you have to lug around a big case full of discs ?
As pointed by other reader, the HD movies are most likely to be streamed from the web / stored on an USB key.

In most countries with proper legislation (say Switzerland), users will probably format-shift their library to something compatible (just the same way people encode their CD libraries for ther MP3 players).

In the USA, due to the broken DCMA laws, this might be harder to achieve legally - on the other hand, with the rise of "always-connected"-ness (pervasive WiFi and 3G), online rental/streaming solution might flourish. Then again, the USA is also a country with broken data plans, so hitting the monthly download limit might be a problem.