Taiwan companies making tablets are being "persuaded" by Intel and Microsoft not to use Arm.
According to Digitimes, the arm twisting explains why Asus and MSI who had made it clear they were producing Tegra-based ARM tablets with Android at the start of the year suddenly shifted to Atom processors, with Windows 7 as the OS.
While some will make the ARM tablets they will be a second string to the bow.
It is not clear how Intel and Microsoft put the fear of God into the tablet makers.
Intel has repeatedly been accused of discouraging the use of non-Intel hardware through pricing and supply practices.
Redmond is the key OS supplier for virtually all Taiwanese computer builders and has some sway over the terms of how its software reaches the systems.
Intel and Redmond have denied doing this sort of thing in the past. But this year they really do need to pull out all the stops.
Many companies have chosen ARM over x86 for many of their tablets, including HP.
ARM processors have better battery life, better performance with video and 3D graphics, and the option of touch-friendly mobile platforms like Android and iPhone OS.
As far as phones go, they waited WAY too long to come out with a mobile OS to compete with Apple, which ended up giving Google time to slip in Android. Now they're pretty much screwed on the mobile phone OS side. It's going to be a challenge to get people (and more importantly developers) to leave their bread and butter iPhone and Android to move back to Windows Mobile (now Windows 7 phone).
While Intel is undoubtedly the best at making x86-based CPUs... there's no need for them any longer. ARM's quad-core CPUs can do 95% of everything most consumers would need, and when GlobalFoundries gets finished porting that ARM core to 28nm gate-first process by 2011, the speeds will increase to well over 2GHz with amazingly low power.
The ARM ISA also has several advantages for programmers over x86, primarily due to predication which removes the need for a complex branch prediction unit, which is a heavy power draw.
ARM has it going on, and you're right, derrick, they are scared. The future is ARM-based CPUs running Linux-based operating systems. It's just that simple, because it's just that simple.