The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid 431
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting article on how this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance. Their argument is that tablets are going to disrupt the PC, and these tablets are predominantly going to be running on Google's Android powered by ARM processors — 'Armdroid.' Quoting: 'Both Microsoft and Intel have suffered from the same problem that most successful companies face when dealing with disruption. They cannot find a way to profitably invest in low-end offerings. Think about it from Microsoft's point of view: now that Windows 7 has been developed, to sell another copy, they don't have to do a single thing. Because of this, it becomes very hard for any executive to advocate the complete development of a low cost OS that will run on tablets: not only would it cost Microsoft a lot to develop, but it would result in cannibalization of its core product sales. Intel has the exact same issue. Why focus on Atom, or an even lower-end chip, when there is so much more margin to be made by focusing on its multi-core desktop processors?'"
Re:The Year of the Linux Palmtop? (Score:5, Informative)
I really hope so, but I'm loosing faith that the popular Linux distributions will actually break out from their server (and to a small extent desktops) stronghold.
It's the OEM device manufacturers, if you look at the netbook/laptots debabcle, outside the rather significant Wintel strangulation, each OEM decided to roll their own or partner with some no name distribution for their initial Linux offerings which IMHO resulted in a rather poor consumer experience.
This gave Wintel their opportunity to get in a take control. You can see it happening again with Android, the frequently talked about fracturing of the platform will be matched by the plethroa of App Stores which are going to spring up.
Reviews of the Toshiba AC-100 all say the same thing great hardware (with some odd keyboard decisions) badly let down by the Android implementation and slef rolled App Store.
Unless an ARM OEM device and Android (or a popular big Linux distribtion) presents a decent consumer experience this will just be another "Year of the Linux..." meme in the making.