While ARM Holding is going up and Intel Corporation is moving down, I therefore have no doubt who will end up being a clear winner in the race to become no.1 micro chip producer in the years to come.

ARM with it ARM7 and ARM9 processor can easily take on Intel Atom for many reasons, firstly ARM7 and ARM9 consume less power and have longer standby times the Intel Atom processor. Secondly the ARM7 and ARM9 is much smaller in size then the Intel Atom, this will reduce cost for hardware vendors.

ARM Holding to date powers more then 95% of the smart phones, such as Nokia, iPhone, Blackberry and host of other communication devices such as TV Music player and set-top boxes.

source:
http://www.payasyougomobilephones.mobi

Just another example of a "solution" looking for a problem. Who the hell needs these devices anyway?

Besides, it's not the hardware, it's the software. I don't care what instruction set is used, what I care about is the applications. If it can do what I want, great, if not, then go screw.

"After using 4 smartphones and 9 netbooks, I wonder how big the space is for MIDs. Smartphones are getting smarter and netbooks are getting cheaper."

Netbooks are getting cheaper? The main players seem to be obsessed with releasing bigger versions (10" screen minimum) for more money, with Windows XP foisted on the punters.

At some point, there'll be a need for other players to come in and undercut the likes of Asus, teaching them to stick to the winning formula instead of trying to lead the punters back towards old-school laptops. Maybe ARM-based devices have a role to play in that.

The Nokia n8x00 series has made a lot of progress already and is quite usefull--speaking as a user of the n800.

Intel has a lot of catching up to do..

I see that webkit, from Apple, as well as OS X runs on ARM. That cannot hurt.

Of course the main improvements in Intel's power saving are likely to come from improved production processes and as ARM based devices tend to be contracted out many of those process based improvements will also come to that platform.

Apart from marketing hype and supposed x86 compatability (which is bit of an albatross for consumer level devices) ARM has everything going for them. Just wish I had some spare cash to buy their shares...

After using 4 smartphones and 9 netbooks, I wonder how big the space is for MIDs. Smartphones are getting smarter and netbooks are getting cheaper.

Smartphones can get away with not being as powerful because most of the apps are driven out of the cloud. iPhone is probably the best example. Full Facebook client, multiple full twitter clients, video download and playback, multiple photo apps, music, GPS mapping... RIM makes up for any of the real-time video capabilities iphone doesnt have. Real-time video publishing with services like Qik.

This will be very interesting....