ARM Secures 13% of PC Market by 2015

That ARM wants its chips inside personal computers is no news, but it looks like at least one analyst firm actually sees this happening, with a visible result expected over the next few years.

At the moment, the PC market is still firmly owned by the x86 central processing unit architecture, which Intel and Advanced Micro Devices work with.

Of course, ARM processors have also been getting more powerful, while x86 ones have been making progress in terms of energy efficiency.

Basically, the line between the two is becoming blurry, not like when ARM units were restricted to phones, handsets and all other small form factor, mobile electronics.

The tablet PC was the first step towards ARM-based computers, and it looks like some analysts, in this case IDC, believe they have a future.

The main reason for this is because ARM now has multi-core chips of its own, so the performance gap between them and Intel/AMD has narrowed.

True, there won't be an instant boom of ARM PCs, but the rate at which they will appear and sell is expected to be noteworthy.

IDC estimates that, by the time 2015 comes around, ARM-powered personal computers will account for 13% of the category, no doubt aided by the fact that Microsoft Windows 8 will support the architecture.

The analyst firm made this prediction in its announcement dealing with the PC sales in the first quarter of 2011, finding positive evolution.

"The first quarter, which is usually weak, was strong in terms of unit shipments, but surely benefitted from an extra calendar week," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC.

"Both Intel and AMD grew unit shipments sequentially, which indicates some decent strength in their new platforms. Due to the first full quarter shipping their Sandy Bridge and Fusion microprocessors with integrated graphics processors (IGP), processors with IGP grew to slightly over 50% of market shipments for the first time."