06 May 2008

ARM's boss talks take-over,
Smartphones, Symbian, Android and Apple

Shortly after the iPhone launched earlier this year, the head of microprocessor maker ARM said the new handset will stimulate growth in the smartphone market because the hype around the product would pique people's interest. Since then, the iPhone, and the smartphone market overall, have taken off.

ARM's CEO Warren East was back in Taipei just after the launch of Google's Linux-based open software platform for mobile phones, Android, another potential mover for the smartphone market. But in an interview in Taipei with IDG News Service (IDGNS), he said Android will have a delayed effect on smartphone sales because handsets built around it aren't expected to hit markets until the middle of next year.

Smartphones are mobile handsets that also run software for e-mail, Web-browsing, mapping and calendaring, and other functions normally found on a laptop PC. Google is making the software only, and plans to offer it to manufacturers to use it in their handsets. So far, Taiwan's High Tech Computer has said it is already working on a gPhone, or Google phone.

Still, the new handsets will be good for ARM because it supplies its chip technology to the smartphone industry. In addition to smartphones, East discussed the old Acorn PC, mobile devices for emerging markets, and the potential of putting microcontrollers in electric motors used in washing machines to make them twice as energy efficient, and the huge impact that would have on global energy needs.

In a recent interview, Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford called Google's Android just "another Linux platform," indicating it's not much of a threat. Do you agree?

I suppose technically he's right. It's based on Linux, but I'd say it's a little bit more than that because Google is clearly steering it in a direction. Also, it's got the Google brand attached to it and in this day and age, if you attach the Google brand to a sweet wrapper, it's got some value, hasn't it?

I think what he's saying is that If you're going to build a phone operating system, then there's a lot of work involved between launching a phone operating system and having hundreds of millions of the them out in the market. Symbian's first operating system running on ARM was launched back in 1996 or 1997, and here we are 10 years later and Symbian has a majority share of the smartphone market. There's a lot of water under the bridge, it takes a lot of R&D to get there. I think he's just pointing that out.

Read the full interview right
.:[ HERE ]:.