New Wave of Netbooks to use ARM processors

The new Netbooks which are yet to be showcased would use the less energy consuming ARM processor

The Netbook revolution began in 2008 with companies like ASUS and Acer making headway in this newly found market. Both of them aggressively launched smaller versions of Laptops which were not only easy to carry around but also had a decent amount of processing power thanks to the Intel Atom processor. Soon these Netbooks became very popular and till date have attracted many other manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo and many more to step into the market and heat up the competition.

It is estimated that the Netbook market is going to increase at a very rapid pace. One of the leading research firm Gartner estimates that worldwide shipments of Netbooks will jump by 50%, to 7.8 million units in 2009, from 5.2 million in 2008. It also estimates a quarter-over-quarter growth for the nascent netbook sector could exceed 20%. It is also said that the consumers may buy more than one Netbook because of various options like performance, portability, capability and cost.

Innovation and creativity is driving growth in this sector. We have seen that form factor is getting smaller and smaller, battery life is improving, processors are getting powerful, etc. All these factors have been drivers for the penetration of Netbooks. We see that there is also a trend towards convergence that is a single device being able to meet multiple needs. The Laptops reduced in size but were still able to maintain the functionality in the form of Netbooks. Similarly mobile phones have converged to smartphones capable of a lot more like internet surfing, games, applications, etc. Now the move is targeted to reduce the gap between the smartphone and a Netbook.

The Netbooks which are available in the market use the Intel Corporations Atom processor but in the future it is said that they would use the ARM processor which is used in almost 9 out of 10 mobile phones that we use today. The ARM processor will provide reduced power consumption leading to an increased battery life thereby enhancing portability. The catch here is that these processors won’t be able to support the current version of Windows operating system and would hence be available only on the open source Linux platform, some people also speculate that they might be able to support Google Android platform. We would have to just wait and watch. Microsoft will not just sit idle and let go this opportunity, it has all the experience and technical expertise to come up with an operating system which is compatible with the ARM processor. Freescale, a manufacturer of ARM chips has projected that by the year 2012 half of all Netbooks will run on the ARM processor.

These new series of Netbooks are referred to as Netbook 2.0 by some people, which derive its analogy from the Web 2.0 which was an upgrade to the earlier web based architecture so as to incorporate social networking, blogging and much more. It is estimated that as many as 10 ARM-based Netbook models could hit the market this year, according to ARM. Major PC players and Asian contract manufacturers have shown a lot of interest in them.

Some analyst believe that this turn of events could lead to disruptive times for the PC industry and may alter its structure altogether. Wireless carriers such as AT&T Inc. are helping lead this change by subsidizing the Netbooks, while graphics chipmaker Nvidia Corp, wireless chipmaker Qualcomm Inc and Freescale Semiconductor Inc have all designed ARM-based processors that can be used in the new Netbooks.

These Netbooks which support the less expensive ARM chips and free open source Operating system are believed to be priced in the range of around $200 which is quite cheap and may attract even the non users to try it out. The Economic Times has reported an increase in ARM share prices by about 35 percent in the year to date, compared with an about 14 percent gain in the DJ Stoxx European Technology Index.

The wait for such Netbooks would be over in June when they will be showcased in the Computex fair in Taiwan. It is believed that as many as 10 manufacturers would showcase Netbooks having ARM processors. Till then the speculation will go on.

they Computex