Wed, Jun 01, 2011 page12

• INTERVIEW: ARM executive describes bright future for his company

  British chip designer ARM Holdings PLC commands a dominant 85 percent share of the global tablet-PC market. The company’s vice president Ian Drew discussed his company’s plans for the future and his take on market trends with ‘Taipei Times’ staff reporter Lisa Wang at Computex yesterday in Taipei

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  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.]
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