Taipei Times: ARM set an ambitious target of seizing more than 50 percent of the world’s mobile PC chip market by 2015 at a time when mobile devices have grown 2.5 fold to about 750 million units from 300 million units this year. What do you see that makes your company feel optimistic about its market share expansion?
Ian Drew: Three things. I think the whole product range going from smartphones to digital TVs — which are smartbooks, ebooks, media tablets, clamshell [laptops] and everything else — and I think what we’ve got now is something we haven’t had in the PC industry for a long time, which is the ability to differentiate from different things.
Like your laptops now may be not much different from what you had three years ago, while your tablets can come in different sizes, or tablets that dock with phones or other things.
That is No. 1. And No. 2, I think there is a lot of software. You have Web browsers, Android, Microsoft’s browser, Chrome OS.
The third thing is, everybody wants the Internet everywhere. This whole connectivity is really driving new growth.
We already had about 10 percent [market share] last year. We expect to grow to between 15 percent to 20 percent this year. So, if you look at new software and new products coming out, I think it’ll be about 50 percent [by 2015].
TT: How will ARM benefit from Microsoft’s decision to use ARM architecture in its next-generation operating system? Will this give a boost to ARM’s royalty revenues?
Drew: I think it opens a new market for us. It opens a new opportunity for Microsoft as well, and I think one plus one is more than two in this case. I think our ecosystem and Microsoft’s ecosystem will have great future growth opportunities.
I really think we have two worlds — the mobile world and the PC world. Cloud computing and Internet everywhere means it is harder and harder to differentiate between what is the phone world and what is the PC world. We have to redefine everything. What we used to call PCs is personal computers, but a phone is more a personal device to you now than your PC.
We get royalties from chip, CPU companies like Qualcomm, not from software companies. The partnership with Microsoft helps us shift to new area like notebooks. But we do not get royalties from Microsoft, but from notebook computers and others. It will indirectly increase our royalties.
TT: What is the next big thing?
Drew: Servers and data centers. When I click on my [Apple Inc] iPhone, it’s going to the Web and it goes to data centers. These mobile phones and tablets will fuel data center usage. I see big data center growth because of the explosive content demand everywhere. The next big thing is making sure that is energy efficient as well.
When you say the hope is on the enterprises, but in reality, a lot of growth comes from consumers using all these devices.
TT: Being a long-term partner with Intel and Microsoft, Taiwanese companies are slow to pitch new products into the mobile PC market. They do not know what consumers really like, but are just being followers of Apple and the like. What do you think?
Drew: They used to do what Intel told them to do. Intel has a traditional concept of what a laptop should look like. Now they have more freedom. [Local companies start adopting new open software such as Android and Chrome, which gives room for hardware makers to design their products without a product stereotype for them to follow.]
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three people successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked Taiwan’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing
RSS