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Intel chief responds to Microsoft’s ARM-compatible Windows announcement

by Pete Mason on 14 January 2011, 14:34

Tags: Windows 8, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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With the explosion of ARM-powered 'smart' devices and Microsoft's decision to support the processors in the next version of Windows, some say that Intel should be worried. However, the company's CEO, Paul Otellini, certainly isn't one of those people.

Following the report of record earnings over the past year, the executive was asked to comment on Microsoft's announcement. Apparently Otellini views it "as being not a lot of new news," adding that he "can see positives and negatives for Intel in this announcement".

"The plus for Intel is that, as they unify their operating systems, we now have the ability for the first time, one to have design from scratch, touch enabled operating system for tablets that runs on Intel that we don't have today," he continued. "Secondly, we have the ability to put our lowest power Intel processors running Windows 8 or next generation Windows into phones, because of the same OS stack and I look at that as an upside opportunity for us."

It's not all positive, though. Otellini admitted that some manufacturers might start to build low-cost, low-power systems that could take on the basic productivity tasks of a PC at a much lower cost. Again, though, the CEO showed no fear, citing Intel's dominance and experience in the PC space as reasons why its market share is safe for the time being.

"That space has a different set of power performance requirements where Intel is exceptionally good. [Furthermore], users of those machines expect legacy support in terms of software and peripherals that has to all be enabled from scratch for those devices."

In short, Otellini didn't so much as flinch and he clearly sees a strong future for Intel - even as the market for ARM-powered devices continues to grow and increasingly powerful portable devices eat away at low-end PC sales.

HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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Posted by semo - Fri 14 Jan 2011 15:27
The sooner Intel's archaic licensing and legacy die, the better. That's the problem with legacy though… it doesn't die quickly enough. Hopefully more and more devices become driverless (such as printers) and reduce the dependency on old stuff
Posted by JGJones - Mon 17 Jan 2011 01:43
I'm quite interested to see how ARM is increasing their reach now especially for tablets.

And people are now using less of their CPU power than before (apart from gamers pretty much) - that's why Intel was able to sell the Atom - people don't need that much power.

The “cloud” while might seem like a buzzword is a serious one. More and more people use the Internet to do their thing, be it emails, photographs, documents etc.

Granted, desktop applications are still more popular for things like photographs but Flickr, Smugmug, Picasa et al are just growing in user numbers. Google Docs and alternatives see increasing uses. I've even started using Google Docs myself over OpenOffice sometime myself (OpenOffice still get the bulk of use but the fact is…I used Google Docs when I thought I wouldn't do that…came in very useful when I was on the move).

It's no wonder that the number one application in use is the browser. With that, you don't need a massive eight-core water-cooled 10GHz CPU with 16GB of RAM etc. You can actually get quite a lot done on a tablet with a tiny fraction of the processing power.

The Motorola Atrix phone was for me one of the most interesting device coming out of CES. It's a phone. THere are various docks for it. One of the dock is just a LCD screen and a keyboard (plus batteries). Plug the phone in that dock, it turn into a “netbook”. You pretty much is just using that phone. It's also your computer. Granted it's not a “powerful” computer, but it's good enough for web surfing, word processing etc. I believe it come with a dual core ARM CPU. There is currently NO Intel CPU that can compete against this.

More about the Atrix phone here - motorola.com/Consumers/GB-EN/Consumer-Products-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-ATRIX-GB-EN

No it's not going to crush Windows and Intel - but I hope it does cut down their market share a bit in the future. Let's have some competition in there! :) It'll drive innovation a lot.

It's nice to see the beginning of some competition - Intel pretty must have the heavy-grunt end of the market sewn up, but ARM have the low power highly efficient market sewn up and the two is starting to cross over a tiny bit - there's even talks about an ARM powered server!

(that said….I still want a 8 core water cooled 10GHz CPU with 16GB of RAM :mrgreen: ).