The battle over ARM processors for notebooks and tablets Vs Intel processors for Ultrabooks took another twist today with Qualcomm showing off Windows 8 for ARM at CES.Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs said that his company has shipped more than 7 billion chipsets making it the world’s number one supplier of silicon for wireless.
He said that Windows 8 on ARM is an opportunity for the company to further expand their market share, he also said that Qualcomm were intent on taking notebook market share away from Intel with their Snapdragon chipset which is also appearing in a new generation of smart TVs
“That is going to be a really exciting new opportunity for the [Snapdragon] S4 chip to flex its muscles,” Jacobs said. “That is a game changer.”
Currently Snapdragon processors power 300 devices with another 350 in the works. Many of these are Android smartphones.
Jacobs gave the first public demonstration of a tablet with the Snapdragon S4 and Windows 8 running on a wireless network. Currently there are more than 20 manufactures with more than 70 Snapdragon S4-based products in the pipeline, Jacobs said.
In Australia Telstra is set to start selling 4G devices running the new Qualcomm chipsets.
The demonstration of Windows 8 using an ARM processor was smooth with Metro apps, running full-screen. He also demonstrated IE browsing on a notebook with “no fan” he said.
Jacobs pointed out that Lenovo recently announced a smart TV with a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip and Android 4.0.
Liu Jun, president of Lenovo’s Mobile Internet and Digital Home Group, gave a demonstration of the new TV pointing out features such as voice-enabled search for video content and gaming.
“We are transferring Lenovo from a leading personal computing company to a leading digital home company,” Liu said.
Lenovo Australia is still struggling to enter the consumer market with the company still focussed on the enterprise and SMB markets.
