ARM expects 50% mobile personal computing share by 2015

ARM is aiming for half the mobile personal computer market by 2015. ARM includes tablet computers in its definition of  mobile personal computers.

ARM co-founder and president Tudor Brown says ARM is in about ten per cent of mobile PCs currently and should be in 15% by the end of this year as tablets grow their share of the overall mobile computer market.

The catalyst for ARM’s increased market share is Windows 8 being ported to ARM. As well as allowing ARM to address the PC market, it will also allow ARM to get into the automotive and TV markets.

ARM’s aspirations for mobile computing are reminiscent of its aspirations for ARM-based net books. Those aspirations were dashed by Intel’s grip on the PC industry which led Intel to offer financial incentives, called Market Development Funds (MDF), to PC-makers not to use rival chips.

"Intel stepped well over the line of aggressive competition on the merits, and engaged in unfair, deceptive and anti-competitive conduct", said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the US FTC, at the time.

The US SEC found that Intel had subsidised Dell to keep it an Intel-only house to such an extent that, in May 2006, when Dell introduced AMD-based products, Intel stopped its payments to Dell and Dell’s profits fell 36% in the quarter.

Since the FTC judgment, Intel has been operating under a Consent Decree that obliges it to desist from such conduct.

Whether ARM  meets its aspirations of a 50% market share in mobile personal computing by 2015 probably depends on how efficiently the Consent Decree is being policed, and how far the distorting market effects of MDF have been removed.