If it is true that the notebook market (and more generally that of PCs) is going through a moment of difficulty, there is a segment that instead promises very well: that of laptops with ARM architecture processors. According to the latest Counterpoint statistics, the next five years will be crucial for their diffusion, and they will reach 25% of all laptops sold by the end of 2027. Naturally at the expense of x86 processors, made by AMD and Intel.
In 2020 ARM laptop market shares were less than 2%; they jumped to 11% in 2021 and in 2022 they grew to 13%. Apple Silicon has more or less absolutely dominated the segment so far, thanks to the phenomenal performance demonstrated since the very first model on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro – especially when compared to what has been seen in the Windows field with Qualcomm processors. 9 out of 10 Arm computers sold in 2022 were MacBooks.
Analysts predict that Qualcomm will soon be able to adapt its hardware proposal to market needs, and it is likely that MediaTek will also decide to enter the game. But as we know in this sense Apple has one huge advantage: it manufactures both the hardware and the software itselfand therefore manages to guarantee a level of optimization that is very difficult to replicate in a more open ecosystem such as Microsoft.
Effectively Windows Arm systems have been around since as early as 2017, therefore three years ahead of Apple, but they have remained substantially ignored due to inadequate performance, especially in the use of old apps developed for traditional architectures. But beware: it is said that the choices remain only these: Chrome OS, which offers both x86 and Arm solutions, grew a lot in the first months of the pandemic, and it is believed that this is only the beginning.
It remains to understand how the two giants of x86 architecture will respondor AMD and above all Intel, which should feel the blow more than the historical rival given its position of dominance.
