ARM CEO has high hopes for netbooks

ARM CEO Warren East, made a very bold statement recently by saying that netbooks will dominate at least 90% of the PC market over the next few years. He also went on to say that ARM intends to power up more netbooks with ARM-based CPU architecture. It is widely known that Windows does not support ARM processors, but ARM is confident that ARM processors will succeed even without Windows support. While technically, most devices nowadays are powered by at least a couple of ARM microprocessors, the CPU remains dominated by Intel or AMD.

ARM seems pretty positive in Linux’s progress as a whole, and plans to use Linux all the way whether with the support of Windows or not. I, for one, am skeptical of ARM’s high expectations. Take for example AMD, even with Windows support, it can barely beat Intel in terms of market share. Intel’s marketing campaigns are very effective, therefore non-technical customers who are not aware of the wide range of options available to them will most likely go Intel. Asked if Microsoft may one day provide support of Windows on ARM architecture, East said “It’s really an operational decision for Microsoft to make. I don’t think there’s any major technical barriers. Microsoft’s well aware of the technical support we can provide to them, but it is an operational challenge for them, and one that only they can work out. We can’t really help them with it.”

Read [PC Pro] Via [Engadget]