BANGALORE, INDIA: ARM is a leading provider of processors for mobile phones and other electronics devices. ARM's chief operating officer Gram Budd, who visited India recently, bets on smart devices. According to him smart devices that give rich Internet experience and day-long battery life will dominate the gadget market in the coming years.

CIOL caught up with Gram Budd during his India visit to know about ARM's plan for the new generation of devices. Excerpts from an interview:

Q: What future do you see for netbooks/smart books?

Gram Budd: If you look at the mobile market, there is a tremendous diversity in devices. The complexity of the interface has increased, similarly the performance demand has also increased. Whereas, the laptops have not really changed over the past 20 years.
 
Today, customers are interested in new class of devices and naturally this calls for a new class of smart devices. They (smart devices) will be like the extension of all good things of a mobile handset, but in a form that makes it more usable with a keyboard and a larger screen and web surfing.

Q: So what is driving the adoption of new generation of devices?

GB: Semiconductor companies that are using ARM-based technology will be able to keep the costs to the consumer low. So we expect the prices of netbooks to come down to about Rs. 10,000. Further, one of the reasons for this is higher demand for mobile handsets and mobile commuting devices is faster broadband speeds that encourages adoption of smart devices.

Q: What about your processor road map?

GB: We are seeing ourself as winners in the mobile handset device market. We see greater demand from OEMs to use the ARM process technology in mobile computing devices too.

ARM has been investing it the processor road map so that we can deliver the ever-increasing demand for higher performance. We also have a massive ecosystem of companies working around ARM architecture to provide the software and other technologies to make the architecture successful.

The Cortex-M0 processor is the most recent addition to the ARM Cortex-M series of processors, aimed at low-power, high-performance embedded applications. Its sister processor, the higher performance Cortex-M3 processor, now has more than 35 licensees and together with Cortex-M0 it is spearheading ARM’s rapid growth into the domain of 8/16-bit embedded devices

Q: Is ARM aiming at PC market also?

GB: Our technology is designed for mobile phones and netbooks; it is not designed for a PC. As per an analyst predictions, ARM would gain 55 per cent share in the global netbook market by 2012. If we become successful in netbook computer market we may think of the the PC market too.

Q: What edge do ARM processors provide viz-a-viz your competitors?

GB: Devices based on ARM processors provide all-day battery life as compared to a few hours of battery life of the current netbook type devices based on X86 architecture.

The other attraction of using the ARM-based technology is connected with our business model based on royalty. Our business model is one of partnership. We work with all of the world's leading semiconductor companies, and this creates competition in the market and drive innovation and cost benefit to the consumer.

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