“While changes in the ancient market-share rivalry between chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices were unremarkable in 2010, the emergence of Apple as a force was anything but,” Brooke Crothers reports for CNET. “‘The year 2010 was marked by the rise of a new platform: the media tablet, led by Apple’s iPad, which employed a [chip] at its heart designed by Apple,’ said IHS iSuppli [in a research note this week].”
“Though the Apple A4 processor and recently announced A5 chip are made by Samsung Electronics, that’s no different than, for instance, Qualcomm-branded chips, which are fabricated by Asia-based contract chip manufacturers,” Crothers reports. “The note continues. ‘IHS believes unit shipments of media tablets soared to 17.4 million in 2010, up from zero in 2009, with levels expected to grow to more than 240 million units in 2015.'”
Crothers reports, “240 million is a very big number and portends seismic shifts in the chip market…”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Seismic shift away from x86 towards ARM architecture. That is the real story.
Even Microsoft has noticed – they’ve ported Windoze to ARM.
Why anyone would to buy Windoze on an ARM device is another issue.
Not really ported as of yet…they’ve talked about porting which is an entirely different thing. Microsoft is not known for being quick to do anything. I wouldn’t expect to see a port of Windows on ARM any time sooner then the latter half of 2012 and thats being optimistic. Realistically expect windows on ARM some time in 2013 or later
kind of a “vapor-port.” M$ is infamous for vapor products. The good news is that their vapor products get regular upgrades.
Yeah Microsoft used to be able to freeze the industry with their vaporous announcements. They’d talk about some pipe dream of theirs and everyone would wait for it with bated breath. Now very few actually care unless they’re paid to. .
But that’s for a Windows Tablet. They’ve not moved away from x86 necessarily, but they’re going to maintain two versions of Windows simultaneously, which sounds like a total nightmare for a company that can barely get CopyPaste ported from WinMobile :S
Perhaps for the major Mac OS release AFTER Lion (when it is no longer “10” and no longer has a “big cat” name), a portion of the Mac lineup will be running on a future quad-core “A-something” chip. That “portion” will start out small, with just the future MacBook Air models, where efficiency and physical size matter most.
Then, as the Apple chips continue to advance in capability, they will migrate through the rest of the MacBooks, followed by unbelievably thin and power-efficient iMacs AND a tiny Mac mini. The Mac Pro will remain the sole Intel holdout.
We are already seeing chips with multple functions ( CPU and graphics) coming out. Is it possible that within a few years pcs will no longer use the traditional chipset? The power of the a5 chipset seem adequate for standard functions.
I’m a simtester comment!
This is a safaritester comment.
I’m a no UA comment.
I like test posts…a lot