Hardware ARM set to take 13% of PC CPU market?

x86 will have a postion in the market for as long as it offers good value I suspect and will maintin strong market share beyond 2015, but it will be challenged and because of that - competition will bring forward more innovations.

Backwards compability will be a hurdle for ARM - but you only have to look at the innovation successes of, net books, net tops, Ipads and Android droid based products to know that the low power sector is the one growing in popularity - performance of many of these products is actually beyond 'acceptable' to it's target audiences.

Consider also in future, next gen (high performance) all-in-one PC's that compete with the iMAC and probably 32-50" internet gaming TV's being taken beyond a console level of performance, with 'cloud gaming' which may actually re-inject some life into PC games (could also dumb it down I guess and thats a worry) and provide stronger sales competition for consoles...... ARM powered consoles is a nice vehicle to help create a new standard in PC's beyond x86...... interesting concept also.

There are so many facets to this, like the F1 2011 season, these are really really exciting times right now

 

Beh...I think I'll swap my AMD stock for ARM.
Viewing the performances, I should have done that years ago

 

Software is only part of the picture. IMHO, the various ARM license holders interested in pitting ARM against x86 PCs need to agree on some expansion and boot loader standards similar to the PC. I have been expecting someone to gain some traction and see something happen along those lines like with the IBM PC. Instead, Google might be the driving force.
After that, I think ARM has a better chance just because companies like Foxconn, Samsung, Quanta, etc can tweak their own chips and have them custom made rather than being limited by what companies like Intel or AMD offer. Apple is already an example of this happening. But then, Apple tends to conform to their own standards and are not concerned with interoperability outside their brand.