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About LinkBacksRead more.Chip-giant’s business model will eventually be its undoing.
Read more.Chip-giant’s business model will eventually be its undoing.
Eh? So not selling something is a bad business decision? ARM are pretty conceited in their own IP/royalty mentality. Intel does that, plus peddle silicon, that's why they're loaded and ARM is still a little nat in comparison, even after 2 decades.
Originally Posted by Agent
I think he's missed the point, unless I have.
Intel own a group of fabs, and they manufacture silicon, but they also manufacture boards in desktop market.
Recently we've seen Intel focus on moving toward the "system on a chip" concept to great effect - look at the netbook market as an example. 5 years ago this market hardly existed. Now, this same technology will enable tablets and iPad copies to run on an X86 platform. Next is going to be the miniturisation process to get this into a cell phone.
With this in mind, how exactly does Arm's strategy differentiate them. They're all purveyers of silican. The mobile phone market has just been a market that has recently exploded, whereas the server and desktop markets are considerably more mature markets.
When we see a copy of Windows released on X86 and other platforms, THEN you can truly say that ARM has landed in the mainstream and can replace Intels products, but until then, you're limited to other OS's, the cloud and using MSTSC in order to run mainstream productivity software.
well in the mobile sector ARM already are 'obliterating' Intel
to see it still be that way in a 3 or 4 years should be a target for them
Intel or AMD will buy ARM and then that'll be that.
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[GSV]Trig (24-11-2010)
And the first real way out of the phone market for ARM is the emerging tablet market - people won't accept anything other than windows for netbooks but tablets are a whole different ballgame. If tablets expand sufficiently you'll have to wonder how MS will cover that - with WP7 tablet edition? Maybe.
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^ I doubt it, microsoft knows not to mess with Google now after bing
Google = probably best run company in the world (who doesn't want to work there?)
Microsoft = very slowly sinking ship
The ones who got lured away to Facebook?
I dont think MS is as bad off these days, say 3 years ago and I would be the first person to think that they are doomed.
But we have had the Xbox 360 and Kinect, Win 7 and WP7. Even the Zune was a very attractive platform, hell I would have had one over a itouch if they had released it to the UK.
I think they have shown that they can adapt and are willing to change and go back to the drawing board to think again. I think we will see more of this as the old blood of MS moves on, anyone notice that these changes have happened more and more as they leave of late?
In regards to ARM, I'm impressed that they have done so well so far on a royality basis. But they have little in the way of competition so far. Time will see, as said before give it 3-4 years and I think we will see more players in this market. I dont think all companies will want to buy a license, find a fab company and then intergrate the chips into the product.
But time will tell, I dont think its so clear cut.
Bit leftfield given what I said - but the fact of the matter is the MS don't have the tablet market covered (at all) right now. W7 tablets have completely failed to arrive for all intents and purposes and Apple (not Google) continues to run away with the market (on ARM). Google don't yet have a tablet OS ready to go (despite OEMs shoehorning Android onto them). There is still time for MS to produce a tablet edition of WP7 for example (on ARM), and certainly the market won't be out of reach of even Win8 in 2012.
As said, MS is far from 'sinking' given a range of solid (and innovative) products across a number of market segments and their core markets (Windows/Office) still remain largely unchallenged. Chrome OS is delayed and even when it arrives many will see a thin web client as a poor substitute on the desktop. I also think MS' core culture has shifted massively in the past 3-4 years - they are far from being the MS of old (albeit with a way to go yet).
The interesting point here (and back OT!) is ARM have a market now not just for mobiles but for the emerging tablet range (which are almost all ARM based). What could muddy it are SOCs from AMD and Intel this coming year which will be far more power conservative.
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I think the point that ARM were trying to make is this:
Intel develops x86 and builds specific type of chips. You then have to pick from a list (admittedly very long) of chips that Intel has decided to build - balancing price, performance, heat etc... You're stuck with what Intel offers unless you're someone like Apple who can ask for something a bit different.
With ARM, they work on the technology and then license out designs - allowing the companies that use ARM products far more freedom to tweak and then build what they want. The individual company can then decide to prioritise price or performance or heat or energy use etc... over the others and get a chip that's more ideal for what they need. Obviously that needs more expertise on their end than simply buying in chips, but, for larger businesses it makes sense.
They are both very different business models and I can see the attraction to using ARM designs for people like Samsung and even Apple with the A4.
Presumably then the assumption is that the future is in low-power netbooks and pads etc. Even if that were true, Intel has got more than enough money to compete in any market they take an interest in.
The ARM dude has a point about computer companies historically being unable to survive paradigm shifts, but the extent to which the mobile/tablet and the PC markets overlap remains unclear.
ARM may well end up dominating Intel in terms of total number of chips running on its instruction set vs. x86, but as the first commenter said, as a company it remains tiny by comparison.
A more worrying trend for ARM is that the biggest mobile chip-maker in the world - Qualcomm - doesn't license its CPU designs, just (to the best of my knowledge) its instruction set. I wouldn't bet against Apple wanting to move in that direction too and you have to wonder how sustainable a business model based on instruction set licensing is.
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