CEO of ARM Holdings René Haas made a bold statement regarding the future development of the market PC. According to him, the share of devices based on ARM chips by 2029 will exceed The figure is 50%.
Its architecture is used on the PC market has been around for several years, but it only found a new lease of life with the advent of processors from Apple and Qualcomm, which turned out to be powerful enough to compete with the best processors on the market. Its rival x86, on the other hand, dominates in the PC market for four decades.
Haas’s confidence is backed by loyalty Microsoft’s ARM ecosystem in terms of software. Technically, the company turned to ARM with Windows RT, but the architecture was further developed with Windows 10 and 11. Even x86 compatibility with it.
With Arm now staking itself in the PC landscape (thanks to Qualcomm and Microsoft), It Holdings CEO Rene Haas has made an incredible statement (reported by Reuters) regarding future market share. By 2029, he expects more than 50% of Windows PC users to run Arm-based chips instead of x86 processors.
“Arm’s market share in Windows – I think, truly, in the next five years, it could be better than 50%,” — Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas
Haas’ statement is as wild as it gets. It has been around for a few years in the PC landscape, but it is gaining new life with the introduction of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus Arm SoCs, which are capable of competing with the Best CPUs on the market (at least according to official Qualcomm benchmarks). By contrast, x86 has completely dominated the PC landscape since the conception of a PC started four decades ago.
Haas’s confidence in it is backed by Microsoft’s dedication to the Arm ecosystem. Hass explains that Microsoft has gone well beyond anything it has done previously with Arm in the last couple of years (speaking in terms of development). Haas continued saying that Microsoft is very much committed to Arm from a software standpoint.
There is certainly a lot going on for Arm right now, and Hass is right. Microsoft has never been more committed to the Arm ecosystem than it is currently with Windows 11 on Arm. Technically, Microsoft’s crusade into the Arm world started all the way back during the Windows RT era.
Thanks to Microsoft’s constant development of Arm over the past decade, it has finally reached a state where it feels robust and ready for mainstream support, with strong support for both customers and developers alike. On the developer side, Visual Studio, .NET 6, and the VC++ toolchain all support Windows on Arm. Microsoft also has a plethora of developer tutorials on it learn. Microsoft site teaching individuals how to code drivers and apps with Arm in mind.
The software conglomerate even went the extra mile and built its own x86 to Arm compatibility layer for Windows 11 on Arm so that Arm-based devices don’t have to play catch up to x86 regarding app support. Something that Microsoft learned the hard way with Windows RT.
However, 50% and greater adoption is a tough pill to swallow even by 2029. It might be ready for mainstream customer support, but that doesn’t mean everyone will jump the gun and buy a Copilot+ PC with an Arm chip inside. If we’ve learned anything, it is that people are keeping their computers longer than ever, making the average real-world PC upgrade path longer and longer.
By now, most people are waiting four or even five years before replacing their laptop with a new one. Sure, AI is an incentive to buy a new machine, but if users can access ChatGPT online, that will be a big enough factor.
A share of 50% or more by 2029 seems to be not quite realistic, especially given the trend of users to update their PC. Most people decide to buy a new computer only after four or five years, and even new AI capabilities do not become an additional incentive. Another deterrent High competition may be a factor in capturing the ARM-based PC market. In addition, it is not It is worth excluding factors that affect the prospects for change and development of x86.
