Nearly One In Four Notebooks To Contain ARM Processors By 2015

Posted 07/18/2011 at 4:12pm | by Brad Chacos

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Remember that old Johnny Carson bit where he pretended to be the swami and guessed the contents of an envelope he held over his forehead? Maybe some of those psychic powers transferred over to us here at Maximum PC. No, we're not saying we can pick tomorrow's lotto numbers, but damn we have a knack for timely scheduling. Hot on the heels of our ARM vs. x86 feature – you've checked it out, right? – comes the news that ARM processors are projected to be the driving force behind nearly a quarter of all notebook PCs by 2015.

ARM processors currently reside in just 3 percent of all notebook PCs; IHS iSuppli, a market research firm, expects that number to soar to 22.9 percent by 2015. The same group projects the total number of ARM-powered notebooks to jump to 74 million in the same time span, a tenfold increase over current levels.

Why the leap in adoption? One word: Windows. Microsoft announced earlier this year that the upcoming Windows 8 will be able to run on ARM-based SoCs, and IHS expects ARM to claw out the majority of its market share with value notebooks running the new operating system.

“Value notebook buyers are looking for basic systems that balance an affordable price with reasonable performance," said Matthew Wilkins, a principal analyst at IHS, in the firm's press release. "ARM processors deliver acceptable performance at a very low cost, along with unrivaled power efficiency.”

Of course, it's all in how you look at things. An alternate headline for this article could have been "Intel x86 Still Dominates In 2015," but where's the fun in that?

Edited to correct goof about Windows' history of processor support.