Nomura sees slow, steady ramp for ARM notebooks

LONDON – Analysts at Nomura Equity Research believe that application processors based on the ARM architecture will achieve slow and steady penetration of the notebook computer starting from 2013.

The move is partly enabled by the advent of the Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft, which runs on both ARM and Intel processors, but also encouraged by a power consumption advantage that Nomura says ARM has in low-end, touch-based notebooks. Nomura analysts also beleive equipment makers are eager to design around ARM application processors, although there may be some issues over which pieces of legacy software will run on ARM.

Nomura analysts forecast that Windows 8 notebook application processor shipments would be 20 million in 2013 rising to 290 million in 2015. The ARM share of this would be about 3 percent in 2013 – or 1 million units – rising to 17 percent of about 49 million units in 2015, Nomura said.


Expected adoption curve for Windows 8 operating system in notebook computers


In the following year, Nomura said, it expects ARM to achieve 17 percent market share of the whole notebook computer market, resulting from a one-third market share in the consumer segment and minimal share in the enterprise segment.

The data comes from a detailed assessment by Nomura analysts of the prospects for the ARM Holdings plc share price.


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