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

Re:you can say whatever you want

[BitZtream]

Put any WinCE handheld side to side to n900. The WinCE looks like a kids-play fisher-price laptop, it is a joke.

I've seen several WinCE devices in the wild, never seen an n900 outside of a store. CE may look childish, but its still a hell of a lot more popular, theres a reason.

WinCE is a very reduced Win32 API (so we are not considering the huge collection of Win32 apps here) while GNU/Linux on ARM runs everything designed to be cross-platform.

The API isn't THAT much smaller, and a full API isn't needed on a compact device. In case you haven't noticed, the devices that are owning the market right now are reduced versions of their desktop brothers. Doesn't seem that the majority of people prefer the full thing over the reduced version

Given a powerful ARM machine with plenty of RAM, you can literally compile all your GNU/Linux desktop software for ARM.

Because thats what makes a hardware/software package useful ... that you can compile a bunch of desktop software for a device that isn't a desktop. Just recompiling an app isn't all there is to it, regardless of what you think. A desktop app running on a small device, even a netbook, starts to get shitty since the screen real estate isn't the same.

The fundamental problem here is not what is already available or supported for ARM-Linux but the fact that ARM devices are mostly associated with new Human Interface paradigms which current software can't answer. But this is changing fast with the increasing interest of the community and companies like Nokia pushing Maemo.

The fundamental problem here is that the people using Linux in their smaller offerings are using it because they are cheaping out. Its not Linux's fault, but its a side effect of being free. They are trying to piggy back on everyone elses work to increase their profit margin, which in general is fine. The problem is that they are cheaping out everywhere. Half ass hacks or recompiles of full desktop applications aren't that good on tiny displays like a netbook or phone, yet thats what they keep trying to do. Most Linux based devices on the market are 'we put in as absolutely little investment of money and time into the product as possible and expect it to rule the world, even beating out other devices where have much more energy and thought put into them. /me waits for the troll mod since I didn't paint Linux as the end all solution to everything.