Apple, Microsoft deliver one-two punch to Intel

Flickr user huangjiahui

COMMENTARY Intel (INTC) has been at the top of the processor business for so long, it's hard to imagine the personal computer industry otherwise. But that's exactly what Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) envision. Both are moving their operating systems to ARM architecture chips.

That could spell serious trouble for the chip giant. The move by Microsoft and Apple is about far more than embracing processors normally associated with mobile devices. Computing is changing, and the companies are shifting how they have approached personal computing since the 1980s. That may leave a lot less room for Intel inside.

If you've seen one Windows, you've seen them all

ARM (an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines, the 1980s joint venture between Apple and two other technology companies, which developed the technology) has become the go-to architecture for much of mobile computing. Apple's A5 chip, used in both the iPad and the iPhone 4S, is based on ARM. Some time ago, Microsoft purchased an ARM license, ostensibly so it could develop Windows Phone. But the company has made it clear that ARM will mean much more to Windows -- in a version called Windows on ARM -- than a smartphone platform. As Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live unit, wrote in a recent blog post:

While discussing our engineering for ARM processors, it is important to keep in mind that in addition to all of the new work for the ARM platform we have done, much of the work discussed in this post applies directly to the x86/64 platform and Windows 8 as well. We could not be more excited or supportive of the new products from Intel and AMD that will be part of Windows 8 -- across a full spectrum of PC form factors including tablet, notebook, Ultrabook, all-in-one, desktop, and more that all take advantage of the new capabilities of Windows 8 while Windows 8 takes advantage of new features in hardware.

Yes, the work applies to an Intel platform, but Microsoft could have said the same thing about moving in the other direction. Peter Bright in Ars Technica noted that the ARM and Intel x86/64 versions are largely identical. A little thought, recognizing current market developments, suggests that many of those ARM-powered devices will eventually replace ones that formerly would have used an Intel chip.

Et tu, Apple?

Another reason for Intel to worry relates to Apple working to secretly port Mac OS X Snow Leopard to ARM chips. Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, uses the same software kernel as Mac OS X.

But a port of the entire operating system would be something else, entirely. As I've been arguing for some time, there's evidence aplenty that Apple wants to support only one operating system. It makes sense, as it better ensures similar user experiences, more effectively leverages development work, and reduces costs.

The MacBook Air has proven that people want smaller, lighter devices that are mobile and enjoy long battery life. Some, like Chris Foresman at Ars Technica, argue that it wouldn't make sense for Apple to move laptops to ARM chips because new Intel chips will continue to enjoy a big performance advantage.

Not so important any more

That's true. But here's the thing -- most people won't need that extra computing horsepower. It's like saying that the PC is drawing its dying breath. That doesn't mean all machines powered by Intel's traditional architectures will disappear. Some people will continue to need the heftier processing capabilities that more powerful desktops and laptops provide.

But only some. The "death" is the end of the dominant market position. The industry's growth is with new, lighter platforms that use less power and still provide all the computing muscle that most users will need. The more devices that Apple's and Microsoft's manufacturing partners can power with a smaller and, most importantly, cheaper ARM processor, the more they can reclaim some margin to cope with the downward drift of hardware prices.

For Intel, that may mean that its signature "dum dum dum DUM" jingle winds up sounding more like the "dum ... dum ... da-dum" of Chopin's Funeral March.

[Marc Jellinek]

Apple and Microsoft aren't "moving" to ARM (implying that as they move to ARM, they will leave x86/x64 behind), they are porting to ARM.

I can't speak to what Apple is doing until they make an announcement. I'm sure the referenced article is accurate (Apple has a long history of using "leaks" to effectively aid their marketing), but until there is an announced product, Apple has some plausible deniability.

I think about the "PC being dead" vs "loss of dominant market position".

I look at what I'm doing right now: posting a comment on a website. No local storage required, no local processing horsepower required, no locally installed software required (other than a browser).

I think about what I see most information workers doing: Accessing, editing and submitting documents using portal software like SharePoint; email, calendaring, and using web-based user interfaces to local or cloud-based systems. No local software required, other than an office suite. With Google Docs and Office 365, I can see the end of the locally installed office suite; except for disconnected laptops.

For personal tasks, just about everything is web-based: Netflix, Hulu and YouTube for video; GrooveShark, Pandora or Slacker for audio; Hotmail or Gmail for email and calendaring; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for networking/social media; personal accounting and taxes is done online; banking and finance online. All I need is a brower.

Oh, except for reading books and magazines. For that I use the Kindle. Not a PC. I've never enjoyed reading for pleasure on a PC. Not even on a laptop. And every personal task I've listed above can be done on the Kindle.

I think about my personal computers: a home desktop, a personal laptop, a business laptop. When I'm not writing code, I'm accessing web-based systems.

I think about my ARM-based devices: a personal phone I use for business as well as personal tasks, an Android-based tablet and a Kindle Fire. The ratio of PC-to-(non-PC) device is now 1:1. Five years ago that ratio was 3:1. ARM/mobile devices are gaining.

As far as device turn over:
Personal computer: Every 3-4 years
Personal laptop: Every 4-5 years
Business laptop: Every 3 years
Phone: Every 2 years
Other mobile devices: ??

Not only do I have just as many ARM-based devices, I turn them over more often. As things move more to the web (and I do more on the web), the power of my personal machines is less important.

For people that aren't writing code (or doing video editing, photo editing, sound recording/editing) or other processor intensive or latency-sensitive task; they can probably work completely within a browser. And ARM processors on mobile devices (with or without keyboards, mice or touch interfaces) run browsers just fine.

I can even see a day when someone ports Visual Studio or Eclipse to a web/cloud hosted model; with an HTML5-based IDE and compilers running on virtual machines hosted inside or outside the corporate firewall. It would certainly make source control and configuration management much easier.

With SQL Azure and other cloud-based database providers, I don't even need storage for my databases. I don't even need to use SQL Server Management Studio (something else ripe for a port to HTML5) to manage, configure or program the cloud-based databases (although I do prefer SSMS... for now).

There are a hundred Perl-based IDEs/UIs for MySQL. And a thousand places to spin up an instance of MySQL on the web.

In short: the time when a powerful local PC is a necessity for the majority of users has probably passed. Mobile devices based on low-power processors are on the rise. ARM is the current market leader (don't count out Intel just yet).

[TheDrWho]

@eriksherman
what you are saying is that Microsoft is losing interest into their multi billion dollars big main income, does not make any sense, sorry ... of course, they will try to extend it to other platforms, as they did in the past with PowerPC and Dec Alpha, those effort never went anywhere, du to incompatibility to the software libraries and windows legacy, and ARM on Win8 is not any different. Again, you have an opinion, but you seems incapable to accept that the best transistor is always what's won, history is pretty full of previous example of people predicting the end of the PC, as you do it in your article, and the history is full of Intel financial result in solid numbers to show that every single challenge Intel ever go it, ended up with a stronger Intel. But again, you look at your opinion, and I look at the historical financial data ... I can back up your arguement, you just repeat your arguement without anything behind, as every Doom day gurus speak. good day!

[eriksherman]

>> what you are saying is that Microsoft is losing interest into their multi billion dollars big main income, does not make any sense, sorry<<

Sorry, I can't figure out what you're writing here.

>> but you seems incapable to accept that the best transistor is always what's won<<

Over time, greater degrees of integration and density of transistors in a chip have proven most successful, but that has been an industry-wide development. But "best" transistor? That doesn't really make sense.

>> history is pretty full of previous example of people predicting the end of the PC, as you do it in your article <<

You're not reading my post, then, because I don't predict the end of the PC. I suggest that the market dominance of PCs will end. That's a significantly different statement.

>> history is full of Intel financial result in solid numbers to show that every single challenge Intel ever go it, ended up with a stronger Intel<<

Business history is largely a story of companies growing, becoming dominant, and then eventually diminishing and disappearing. To assume that previous success always means future success is to ignore history and data that you claim to embrace.

[Fortiori]

When you say "innovation" do you actually know what that truly means? For Apple to say "innovation" doesn't actually make the product mobile or not, innovative. ARM is evolving in a surprisingly slow pace if you want to call the small updates evolution. Right now, ARM is all but stagnant because of its own limitations. Why haven't I purchased an Apple tablet? It doesn't do enough! It entertains the kids in us but it's not productive.

Apple is a major mobile force. They make great, attractive, easy to use mobile devices. But they are NOT the force drives the mobile market. But that's just semantics I'm sure we can avoid.

Don't get me wrong, I hope engineers at each major processor company wakes up with some holy grail ideas for next generation. It makes our choices and premiums we pay sweeter. But all evidence points to everyone else out pacing ARM at the moment.

[eriksherman]

Yes, I know what innovation means. The point is that Apple's products in the mobile space have been innovative, both in the sense of large changes and then in refinement that follows. Clearly tens of millions of people find that a tablet does enough to replace a PC, at least in many situations.

The difficulty is realizing that what might or might not work for one person personally could still be more than sufficient for most. Would I use a tablet instead of a PC? Nope, because I'm one of those people who needs the horsepower, whether for writing, doing spreadsheet analysis on businesses, editing images and video, or other uses. But my needs aren't those of the mass market. Yours may not be either.

Apple is managing to dominate mobile with products that most people would call innovative -- and turning an idea into something that some (large, in this case) group of people find useful is the definition of innovation, according to researchers in the area.

Does ARM have to change a lot to keep up? Hard to say. Intel is getting some positive attention on its new mobile reference design. However, Apple is putting a lot of money into expanding what its own ARM-based chips can do, and its been filing a fair number of patents in the area. The company has gone for single to double and there are hints that it's working on a four-core chip.

In that sense, ARM can get the advantage that all semiconductors see from shrinking geometries. Throwing more cores into the chip can do a lot for performance.

[TheDrWho]

1992: The PC is DEAD (NY Times)
1994: The PC has become obsolete (Larry Ellison ORACLE)
1999: The PC Era is OVER (Lou Gerstner IBM)
2005: The PC Era is over (Rich Templeton CEO Texas Instruments)
2011: The PC is dead (Mark Dean IBM)
2012: "most people won't need that extra computing horsepower" (Erik Sherman CBS)
Welcome to the dooms day gurus ... 2012 inspiration I guess ... Pretty sad understanding of the industry ... falls in simplistic traps, somebody posting on CBS should know better.

[eriksherman]

Seems like you might be falling into your own simplistic trap. People used to similar things about mainframes - how PCs could never pose a threat. And mainframes still exist. They have their place. It's just not the dominant market one.

[Fortiori]

I'm a little confused at Erik's comment below. This article wasn't about what's the dominant market. The mobile market is the fastest moving sector right now. But that includes notebooks, laptops, netbooks, smart phones and tablets. This read more like someone promoting ARM and Apple more than being factual. If it was suppose to be a review, where's the product reviewed?

[Fortiori]

If this is a prediction, Mr. Sherman will find himself categorized in the same reading section as folk lore, UFO, conspiracies and science fiction predictions like those of the Mayans.

I hate to bruise his apple-ego, but Macbooks didn't prove anything. The laptop/mobile industry followed the trends of consumers. Computing power on the go is 1/3 necessity and 2/3 entertainment of sorts. The people (not apple) proved this was a lucrative industry trend.

He speaks of ARM as if it's the future. Apple and maybe even Microsoft stick with Arm because that's all they have. ARM innovation, if any, is extremely slow to come to fruition which is why the industry is watching to see what Intel and even NVIDIA has to offer. Mobile trends will continue to push the price of tablets and game gadgets down because anyone can make them. Everyone will continue to want something new and stagnant ARM tablet ideas won't suffice.

The more I try to digest this rubbish the more convinced I am that this "prediction" isn't good enough to be in the science fiction section. It belongs in the lost and found.

[eriksherman]

Perhaps. You might notice, though, that a lot of mobile innovation seems to be using ARM chips and that the adoption of these devices, devices that do much of what many people need from computers, is happening at a furious rate.

Apple has proven itself a major force in mobile innovation and is developing its own chips based on ARM. Maybe you think that Apple's innovative activities are actually hype, but the company doesn't seem to be "watching to see what Intel and even NVIDIA has to offer." It doesn't seem to be waiting at all. Neither does Samsung, Motorola, Google, or any other major force in mobile computing. But perhaps they are all UFO conspiracy fans.