ARM wants the sub $200 netbook market

ARM'S DIRECTOR of Mobile Computing, Bob Morris, says he sees a "fundamental shift" in the PC industry towards lower power, "full day use model" devices and reckons his firm is well placed to bring the fight to Intel in the cheaper than Atom chips sub $200 market.
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Morris told the INQ this was the "most unique time" he'd ever seen in the industry, as Intel and Microsoft began to show they were feeling the pinch as netbooks squeezed their margins and revenues, and cannibalising higher end products as prices spiraled downwards.

After all, neither Chipzilla nor the Vole can hope to make a killing from a $250-$350 device using Intel's cheapest chips or Microsoft's most stripped down version of Windows. And this is even before ARM enters the playing field with its upcoming sub-$200 netbooks, with which it plans to take the market by storm and push prices down even lower.

The combination of ARM with Linux - see Ubuntu's latest release - is almost an impossible one for Intel to beat, price wise, with the British Chippie flogging its SOCs for between $10-$20 whilst Chipzilla's Atom starts at $35 apiece.

As for Operating Systems, an ARM device would have a handful to choose from, ranging from Ubuntu's new Jaunty Jackelope full desktop experience, to Google's Android, to Xandros.

Morris reckons ARM powered netbooks could sell for as low as $110, which would place them well within a punters' "impulse buy" range, rather than being something that requires much thought or investment.

Morris told us he saw a phenomenon whereby users wanted their (mini) computers to return to the functionality of five years ago, but with an 'always on', "all day usage model".

He added that people didn't necessarily need MIDs or cheap netbooks to be productivity replacements, although, with the onslaught of cloud computing and the world becoming "more browser based", software compatibility was not as big a deal as Intel would have us all believe.

"Faster and faster really hasn't paid any real dividends" said Morris, explaining that ARM's latest Cortex offerings and Qualcomm's Snapdragon could match Atom's performance "clock for clock" and deliver a full day's battery life to Atom's paltry one hour, or thereabouts. "If you value daily use, it [Atom] is not going to deliver today," said Morris.

Asked if he could describe what an ARM powered netbook might be like, Morris described something akin to a portable DVD player like, a clamshell device, but with web surfing and WiFi enabled and enough battery life to deliver three entire HD films, back to back.

The INQ was also told punters could expect to see five or six such ARM packing devices from "several major OEMs" coming out around August or September, in time for the Christmas shopping season.

"TI, Qualcomm and ARM have been making SOCs for a long time," said Morris confidently when we asked him whether he really believed his firm stood a chance against Intel in the netbook space.

"We're very bullish," he added.

Well, there's certainly no 'ARM in optimism, we reckon.

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BY Sylvie Barak
Source：the INQUIRER

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