Windows 8 Low cost laptop battle

According to an IHS-iSuppli analyst, a new wave of low cost laptops is on the horizon with Microsoft’s’ Windows 8 opening up the market.

Matthew Wilkins, an analyst for IHS-iSuppli, reckons that Intel will face increasing pressure from ARM in the low cost laptop space when Microsoft releases Windows 8. Supporting other architectures such as ARM, Wilkins believes that Intel’s low cost laptop market dominance will be under attack.




“After more than 30 years of domination by a single micro-architecture – Intel Corp.’s X86 – the PC microprocessor…market finally is set for some real competition,” said Wilkins.
Wilkins further states that ARM processor shipments will increase dramatically in the coming years, and he predicts that these processors will find themselves in as many as one in four laptops by 2015. “ARM-based systems will account for 22.9 percent of global notebook PC unit shipments in 2015, up from 3 percent in 2012,” Wilkins said. “Shipments will reach 74 million ARM notebooks in 2015, compared to 7.6 million in 2012.”
These systems will ship in the sub $700 price bracket, and will lure manufacturers away from the x86 chipset. This is already a reality as devices such as the HP TouchPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab run WebOS and Android OS on chipsets from Nvidia and Qualcomm.
Intel is not sitting idle however, with plans of an “Ultrabook” in a similar vein as the MacBook Air as a low cost alternative by 2013. The Ultrabook is expected to run on Haswell, Intel’s first system-on-a-chip device.