Intel Corp (INTC)

[smooth2o]

ARM doesn't need anywhere near the marketing and sales force that Intel needs.

Well ARM doesn't market smart phones and server products either. ARM markets ARM. The power of marketing comes from all those who use ARM. That, in itself, won't do much good if the products don't meet user's needs. And, that's the issue. If Intel can come out with smart phone chips that exceed the power requirements of ARM products and perform much faster than ARM products and there is a demand for faster performance that users can see and use, Intel will be a big winner in the smart phone market. My biggest fear is that the ARM chips will not be noticeably slower than the Intel implementations (it ain't just the processor). Also, there are extenuating circumstances like to what the market will evolve in the next two years and has Intel anticipated that move?

There's also a disadvantage to ARM chips in that just as Apple has designed their own CPU, so will others over time. That basically fragments the architecture. You also have many different software teams working on different hardware designs. That's always been proven hard to do. Not to mention that each design has to be designed and processed separately at potentially lower volumes per OEM. Basically, these smart products are computers, not just phones anymore.

As for the server market, that's quite a few more years out, but I would expect some change to that market as well, as lower power,many multi cores come into use. There's definitely some market share to lose there, but, as you mention the market greatly expands at that point.

much like Android has done for Cell Phones.

The jury's still out on this one per the latest reports that show that a lot of these "Androids" may come from the "other" category.

Smooth