Mobile Internet Devices to be ARMed by 2009

THE FACT THAT ARM HOLDINGS chose to hold its annual board meeting in Taiwan speaks volumes in terms of how the company sees its long-term future.

And according to a revealing Q&A session held by Digitimes, the decision to move the 2008 company shindig out east was about more than having some unusual Asian hors d'oeuvres on the half-time buffet table.

"Taiwan is already a very important market for ARM," noted its top bod Warren East. "Ten per cent of the world's current output of ARM-based wafers is contributed by our clients in Taiwan, which we consider an accomplishment as we've only been in the market for eight years."

The British company's main thrust for the future seems to be aiming squarely at the Mobile Internet Device (MID) market, taking on Intel's Atom chips with its Cortex-A8 and A9 platforms with new ARM-based devices expected to hit the market in 2009.

Although OEMs have been working with Intel and its aggressively marketed Atom architecture for a while, East predicts that the market will soon open up to allow others to gain a foothold.

"ARM's aim is to build an open ecosystem within which partners have the choice of multiple different ARM-architecture solutions from the likes of Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, ST Microelectronics and Samsung," he told Digitimes. µ

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