ARM President Tudor Brown says the company’s RISC-powered chips will capture 50% of the mobile personal computer market by 2015.
According to Brown, shipments of ARM-based processors remain on track to reach or exceed 150 billion by 2020, up significantly from an already impressive 25 billion.
“Today we have about 10 percent market share [in mobile PCs]. By the end of 2011 we believe we will have about 15% of that market share as tablets grow,” Brown told journalists at Computex 2011 in Taipei.
“And by 2015, we expect that to be over 50 percent of the mobile PC market.”
Brown was also quite bullish about entering the Windows market, a space which has traditionally been associated with rival Intel’s x86 architecture.
Indeed, Brown confirmed ARM could start generating royalties from RISC-based chips in Windows-powered laptops and tablets as early as 2012.
“[Of course], where it gets potentially game-changing is what other opportunities it opens up for Microsoft.
“This, [in turn], opens up a much bigger market, and makes a valid and viable operating system for TVs and automotive electronics.”
Interestingly enough, Brown seemed somewhat cautious about ARM’s immediate ability to claim significant server market share, stating that volume shipping of such systems would only likely kick off around 2015.
“We firmly believe this is going to happen. We know it is starting to happen right now. But it’s going to be [at least] several years… [Still], we think its going to be 2014 or 2015, realistically, before you see any volume from ARM” in servers.
Meanwhile, Jerome Ramel, a Paris-based analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, told Bloomberg versatile ARM-based chips offered the company “significant opportunities” across a variety of form factors, devices and platforms.
“We’re going to see tablets, and eventually laptops and servers using ARM-based operating systems, which should open significant opportunities.
“For servers and laptops, power consumption is becoming crucial, and ARM is all about power consumption.”
It should be noted that ARM processors currently claim a 90% share of the lucrative smartphone market and 80% of the tablet space.
