Arm chips are now driving 10% of the PC market, and that small slice is being absolutely dominated by Apple.
That’s the conclusion reached by Sravan Kundojjala of Strategy Analytics (via Tomshardware), with the company reportedly hitting almost 90% revenue share for Arm-based notebook PC processors.
This follows Apple’s switch from traditional off-the-shelf Intel PC chips to its own custom Arm-based M1 chip.
You might not think that there’s much competition in this space, which is still relatively niche as outlined above. However, that 10% market share includes the entire Chromebook market, as well as Arm-powered Windows laptops, both of which had been on the market for years before Apple showed up in 2020.
The key here is that those rival Arm-based laptops have always involved compromises on performance, while Apple’s M1 chip offers genuine desktop-level power – all without an accompanying price hike over their Intel-powered predecessors.
In terms of future competition, Qualcomm recently revealed that it would be launching a new range of Arm-based Nuvia processors for laptops that would be targeting “performance leadership” for the CPU and GPU. The only snag: these first Qualcomm Nuvia machines aren’t expected to arrive until the end of 2023.
Apple just unveiled its first M2 devices in the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, both offering a healthy performance boost over that first M1 generation. Presumably by the end of 2023 we’ll be looking forward to the announcement of another new generation of Arm-based chip in the Apple M3.
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