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| Authored by: calris74 on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 02:46 AM EDT |
They already own the x86 market, and that's
unlikely to
change.
There is a very interesting side-play that is just
starting
to take shape...
Smart phones and tablets are dominated by
ARM - x86 has yet
to make any real inroads. Tablet sales are about to exceed
PC and netbook sales. Add to that the growing Cloud/Web
based 'applications as
a service' model and the risk to
Intel is that x86 will become insignificant in
the
home/consumer market (of course you will still have the high
performance
gaming rigs)
So, Intel (and AMD) desperately need to get into the smart
phone and tablet segments - exactly where Microsoft are
prohibiting Secure
Boot from being disabled. So, the
consumer gets used to being locked out of ARM
tablets
running Windows and, ergo, they will be used to being locked
out of
x86 based tablets (well, the consumer really won't
know the difference between
an ARM and x86 tablet)
Now, nearly all gaming rigs run Windows (game
developers and
video card vendors don't have a good track record for Linux
support - queue Linus's now famous "nVidia .... you" quote).
So Microsoft may
well see a very rapid rise in market share
in what is left of the desktop
market.
Where does that leave us... The desktop market shrinks as
users migrate to ARM based tablets running iOS, Android and
Win8. iOS and Win8
tablets are locked down, leaving only the
Android tablets for hackers to play
with (al-la HP TouchPad
for example)
Now, as Intel/AMD catch up in the
tablet space, Microsoft
hopes to keep Linux out of the new hunting ground for
as
long as possible (queue anti-trust regulators). An anti-
trust settlement is
chicken-feed providing Microsoft
can gain enough market share beforehand
(like they already
have in the desktop market).
Microsoft's aim is to
dominate what is left of the desktop
and server market and to hold their finger
in the tablet
dyke for as long as possible
Adding to this is the
likely migration away from desktop PCs
in the corporate space to thin-clients
connecting to virtual
server farms using Remote Desktop / Citrix - These can
run
Linux no-problem (and can be ARM devices). Not a good
prospect for
Microsoft as the Windows license would
be only slightly less (maybe even more)
than the
hardware cost. Microsoft need to find a way to make sure
thin-clients
are tied to Windows - ARM thin-clients with
secure boot which cannot be
disabled is an easy way to
achieve this
Lots of sides on this coin -
watch this space[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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