By Lisa Fleisher And Don Clark
Chip designer ARM Holdings PLC, keeping its focus squarely on
its core smartphone market, unveiled on Tuesday new technologies
for mobile devices that it says will be much faster while using
less energy.
The Cambridge, England, company, whose technology is built into
more than 95% of smartphones, said more than 10 companies have
licensed its new Cortex A-72 processor design.
"We are still adamant that we are on a path where the phone
becomes the primary compute device," said Ian Ferguson, an ARM vice
president of marketing.
The new technology is expected to be used in phones delivered to
customers in 2016.
The company said the new processor design is 3.5 times faster
than the ARM technology used in most smartphones sold in 2014. The
company expects most chips based on the design to be manufactured
using an advanced production process from Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Co.
While ARM's announcement emphasized smartphone performance, the
company said the new chip was also suited to tablets and
clamshell-style computers like laptops.
"You will see how it gets into other devices as the year
progresses," said Nandan Nayampally, another of ARM's marketing
VPs.
As phones become more powerful, ARM executives said, people are
using them for more complex tasks, such as shooting and editing
video, that require faster processing.
"Gaming has clearly moved from PCs and is coming onto the
phone," Mr. Ferguson said. "This obviously is driving more
performance requirements."
Mr. Ferguson said ARM's conversations with corporate chief
information officers suggested that many have a desire to replace
desktop computers with smartphones. But he acknowledged that
desktop computers still tend to be more convenient for chores like
creating sophisticated text documents and slide presentations.
ARM-based chips, beyond their widespread use in smartphones, are
found in tablet computers from such companies as Apple Inc. and
Samsung Electronics Co. That market has slowed lately, however. The
research firm IDC said on Monday that annual tablet shipments fell
for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Write to Lisa Fleisher at lisa.fleisher@wsj.com and Don Clark at
don.clark@wsj.com
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