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.]
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to