Intel Core M will beat ARM?

In the IDF conference hold at early of this month, Intel has announced the detail information about its Core M processor. Compared with Haswell processor, this Core M adopts 14nm process, and the size is about 50% smaller than Haswell, the power consumption is also reduced by 60%. As Core M processor does not require a fan, so a tablet can be only 7.2MM thickness. We know, Surface Pro 3 is 9.1mm thickness and iPad Air is 7.5mm. As news from Intel, before Christmas holiday, there will be over 20 different tablets with this Intel Core M processor. This Core M processor will compete with ARM.

In fact, ARM does not supply chipset, it just offer chip design to different chipset suppliers, like Qualcomm, Texas Instrument etc. In the past decade, Intel has missed out the smart end market. ARM has occupied smart end market by its power saving design.

As power saving is more important than the CPU performance. AMR has taken over 95 market share in the past decade. In 2010, Apple launched iPad, it means ARM has already moved to tablet field.

Compared with tablets with ARM, the tablets with Core M usually are about 1000 US dollars, Surface Pro 3 is is USD999.00, 13 inch Macbook Air is USD999.00, and 128GB iPad is about 929 US dollars. The price is quite similar. But compared with other cheap tablets, it is still very expensive. So Core M is mostly for high end market.

Compared with ARM, the advantage of Core M processor is the backup of Microsoft. We know, the ARM edition Windows OS-Windows RT is failed in the past years. That is because it can not support Windows software which runs on laptop PC.

This Core M makes the tablets more slim, quiet and power saving. We can see, in near future, we will see some smart phones with Core M as well.