ARM ceo shrugs off tablet pc competition

Speaking to the Financial Times, East estimates that the market for tablets could reach up to 60million unit sales worldwide, but sees rival Intel as no threat. "Atom designs are just not good enough in terms of power consumption [right now]," East said. "Intel knows this." Last month Intel told analysts at the firm's quarterly earnings report that the company was collaborating with partners on future tablets running Android, Windows and MeeGo operating systems. But East believes that Intel is aware that the Atom architecture can't match the power efficiency of the firm's ARM processors. According to East, next year 's consumer electronics show will see a 'raft of new devices' as the tablet market begins to take off. He fully expects companies to develop competing tablets after seeing the huge success of the iPad. Apple's market leading tablet, which uses an ARM based CPU, made up an enormous 95% of tablet sales last quarter, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. Despite remaining predominantly optimistic, East did voice concern that consumer spending on electronics could be vulnerable in the coming months. "You can't avoid that, it's like the weather," he said. We're concerned that it might rain. There are clouds up there. But what we've experienced in 2009 was that Arm still outperformed the industry in a down year."