“Sooner rather than later, Apple will have the ability — and just as importantly, the incentive — to create notebook computers that run on its own custom microchips, rather than ones made by Intel,” Christopher Mims writes for Quartz.
“Intel’s chips have never been in Apple’s smartphones or tablets—the company notoriously passed on that opportunity in the earliest days of the iPhone, a mistake by then-CEO Paul Otellini that has to rank as one of the most head-smacking tech industry gaffes in the past decade,” Mims writes. “Everyone knows by now that tablets are cannibalizing sales of PCs, especially notebook PCs. And here’s the new trend: As the guts of mobile devices become ever more powerful, they are becoming more than adequate to replace the innards of even traditional ‘workhorse’ devices like notebook PCs.”
Mims writes, “There is now a popular device category — low priced but functional ultramobiles — that Apple doesn’t make. That’s historically a signal that Apple is preparing to swoop in and make its own version. It’s exactly what happened with the iPad Mini, for example… Consumers are flocking to notebooks with relatively lightweight processors, and Apple’s iPhone and iPad microchips just keep getting more powerful. If Apple created an A7-powered laptop and ditched Intel chips in the PC industry’s sole growth category, it would leave Intel with nothing but dwindling desktop PCs, niche ‘high-end’ notebooks, and the large-scale computer servers that make the internet possible.”
Read more in the full article here.
