Computer technology continues to evolve to be smaller, lower power and more personal. We moved from mainframes to minicomputers to personal computers led by disruptive technologies: vacuum tubes gave way to transistors, integrated circuits and microprocessors. An "always-connected" mobile computing revolution is now underway, enabled by low-power, system-on-chip (SoC) and energy-efficient ARM processor technologies.
The ARM Cortex-A processor cores have the horsepower to support rich user interface and web browsing experiences, but with outstanding power efficiency for long battery life. User experience and battery life are both valued by consumers, and one without the other is not acceptable. In the past, consumers have had to deal with a computer that provided a good user experience, but with battery life limited to only a few hours, or one that ran all day but did not provide an acceptable user experience. The game has now changed with the latest processors from ARM being able to offer consumers what they want.
ARM processors are at the heart of virtually all smartphones and a majority of portable electronic devices today because of their energy-efficient performance. The high-performance of the new Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 MPCore processors is pushing them into computing markets that have been dominated by x86 chipsets. As with every previous computing revolution, new technology changes the game, and new companies dominate. I believe we are seeing a transition led by ARM processors happening over the next few years.
ABI Research forecasts that annual shipments of netbooks, MIDs, smartbooks and UMPCs based on ARM instruction sets will overtake x86-based UMDs in 2013. Many industry pundits like Stacey Higginbotham from GigaOM agree.
This represents a major shift in the computing market fueled by power-efficiency and riding the success of the smartphone and ARM mobile ecosystems. We are becoming a more mobile society, and the way we interact with computers is changing - we need new products to adapt to this change. Based on the dominance of ARM-based smartbooks, e-readers and tablets showcased at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), it is clear that ARM technology is leading the way.
2010 will be an exciting year to watch this market transition take place. We are seeing strong momentum with our ARM Cortex-A8 based OMAPTM 3 products in leading smartphone, mobile computing and mobile consumer products today. Our dual-core, Cortex-A9 MPCore based OMAP4430, sampling now, will further drive the Next Computing Revolution.
