Taipei Times: Will ARM’s technology support Google TVs?
Tudor Brown: At the moment, it is more a software issue than a hardware issue. It is up to Google if it wants to support ARM, actually. It is still early days. The program has just been announced. We will talk to Google. Maybe we will see something. But I can’t say now.
You can imagine companies licensing ARM technologies, like Samsung and Nvidia, that they want to get into this market.
Jim Wallace: A core component within Google TVs today is the Android kernel, and we already support that and optimized [it] from ARM architecture.
If Google wants to bring Google TV to the masses, it will have to work not just with Intel, but with ARM as well.
TT: ARM has already seized a 30 percent share of chips used in the set-top box and digital TV market, signifying a strong market presence. Do you have a mid-term, or long-term target to expand that further?
Brown: The market is growing. In the next three years or five, we could grow our market share to 50 percent.
TT: We have seen a demonstration of ARM technology through Samsung’s 3D Internet TVs at the presser this morning. What TV makers are also using ARM processors?
Wallace: The top five TV makers are using ARM processors. LG recently has publicly said its TVs are powered by ARM chips. Sony and Sharp use a combination of different silicons, but their key supplier is MediaTek, which licenses ARM technology.
The world’s top three set-box chip suppliers — STMicroelectronics, Trident Microsystems Inc and Broadcom Corp — use ARM technologies. And a bunch of Chinese silicon companies are running ARM technologies too.
TT: How many Internet or connected TVs running ARM processors are in the pipeline?
Wallace: Already four to five of them. A lot of Taiwanese and Chinese companies are moving to ARM.
TT: Do you think tablet PCs will replace netbooks, or even standard notebooks? Is it going to be the next killer device? What about target customers?
Brown: Probably. If something is going to be popular, it is likely ... It will depend on how people will use tablets. If that [tablet] becomes a good business tool, it can overtake [PCs].
It is important how people use tablets. Tablets are different from PCs. The keyboard and mouse are a bit inconvenient. The interface is different. User interface is different on tablets — just using your hands, which for some people may be powerful and feel comfortable.
The Y-generation certainly will like tablet PCs because it is a cool thing. But, the big question is what the commercial world will use it for. Salespeople will use it. Quite a few salespeople, who used to carry books around, now take netbooks. And quite a few of them do not take PCs with them and rely on iPhones.
And I can imagine that tablet PCs will be a quite powerful tool for them.
TT: Will the European debt crisis hurt demand for PCs or electronics?
Brown: Chinese and US markets are still growing strongly. Europe by itself will not determine the whole market. If demand in the US and China is going down, then of course we will have another recession.
But, at the moment, people want to be happy and spend.
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