M$ is changing the way things get done to “preserve” its precious property. For many years, M$ has had OEMs apply a sticker and forced the consumer to type in a lengthy code to help that other OS phone home. Of course, consumers hate that, and so do “partners” who are being asked to do that work for free by M$ and OEMs, right in the factory.

see New Windows verification process creates controversy between ODM and brand vendors

FLOSS must be looking mighty efficient for the “partners” about now. Their margins are already tight and M$ wants them to spend more to install that other OS. I recommend Debian GNU/Linux. It works for you and not for M$.

We don’t have a complete picture but one thing is clear, in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and APEJ (Asia/Pacific Excluding Japan), Apple is not in the top five OEMs of notebooks and desktops. IDC shows APEJ grew shipments 13% compared with Q3 2010 and EMEA shrunk them 3.8%. At the same time and in the same regions, ARMed tablets and smartphone shipments are growing at huge rates of the order of 100% per annum.

Another interesting feature is that in both these regions, Lenovo had growth of around 30% while HP is stalled. While they fight it out, the crowd of onlookers will go buy Android/Linux on ARM.

DisplaySearch has a misleading title and subtitle,
“Tablet PC Architectures Dominated by ARM and iOS; New Kindle Could Light a Fire Under Android

x86 Processors and and Windows 8 Expected to Take Significant Share After 2013″

Just look at their numbers: about 30million units per annum are expected to ship with “8″ in 2017 out of 330million tablets expected to ship in 2017. Is less than 10% significant? What does it signify except that “8″ is too little and too late? Also ARM on tablets is not showing any sign of slowing down except with iOS: DisplaySearch predicts 80% of tablets shipped in 2011 will have iOS but only 57% in 2017.

I think they are way off on those numbers. iOS will be lucky to ship on 60% of tablets in 2012. There are just too many suppliers of Android/Linux devices which meet people’s needs and more are releasing projects every month. “8″ will have similar traction as Phoney “7″. Too little and too late. No one wants to do business with M$ if they have the option and Android/Linux on ARM gives people a viable choice. It’s good for manufacturers and consumers. Even the little suppliers cut out of Apple’s walled garden are ganging up on Apple supplying still more makers of Android/Linux tablets. They see iOS maxing out in 2012 as do I. iOS may see modest growth thereafter but it will be nothing like the past year.

TSMC is producing 28nm in volume now. With the small size of ARMed chips that is a huge increase in the rate of production of chips and at lower power consumption. At the last level, power consumption was mostly acceptable in every application. Now, power consumption should cease being a consideration. That’s what Intel hopes now that they are doing the same at 22nm but Intel still has power issues because of the wasteful x86 architecture and will have to go to 10 or 14 nm to catch up. Meanwhile, ARM is taking over the world of small cheap computers and is much stronger competition there than AMD ever was (about 20% share of units) on desktop and notebook PCs. Even with 22nm production expected in 2012, Intel will have x86 stuff ranging from 35 to 77watts TDP. Intel’s revenue from Atom has declined precipitously with the shift from netbooks to tablets.

The march of the small cheap computers continues to eat Wintel’s lunch while M$ and Intel try to ignore the swarm. The question is when not whether the picnic will be over.