How is it going to kill Intel? Apple's percentage of the desktop market is still a rounding error. If you think they're interested in selling CPUs to others, you need only look back to history to see it's VERY unlikely that will ever happen. If they aren't selling to others, they aren't killing Intel.
Not to mention, even if Intel managed to be "defeated" in the processor space (which I consider just about impossible at this point) - they've got better fab production than anyone else in existence. They've also got lots and lots and lots of products that aren't x86 CPUs.
7.4% of the worldwide computer market is hardly rounding error. Lenovo/HP/Dell put together account for a hair over 50% of the market, although it wouldn't surprise me if the total profits from Apple's 7.4% were greater than the total profits from the top three's 50% due to significantly higher margins.
By comparison, that's roughly equivalent to Honda's market share in the automotive industry, and I don't think anyone would dismiss Honda's sales as being a rounding error.
Other than that, I agree, they are clearly not the sort of company that would be interested in selling chips to other vendors, at least based on their history up to this point. If there were to start selling CPUs to others, it would not be playing to their strengths and would be a huge departure for them as a company.
Exactly. A lot of people seems to think Apple with only a 7% marketshare is small. But Apple are using some of the highest margin chips on their Laptop. I dont think it is anywhere close to 50% of Intel's PC market profits, but definitely in the range of 20-30%. Not to mention the marketing value of being inside Apple.
The next interesting question is at what price point would Intel give and Apple accept to continue using Intel x86 CPU inside Mac.
What you don't understand is that they're changing the game like the iPhone did to the blackberry. The iPad Pro is a computer that can work for most general use cases, which don't require heavy computing power or large storage onsite. With more computing power, it allows for more business applications to be ported over as well. Apple isn't aiming to replace intel in computer chips, it's aiming to replace the need for a laptop or computer.
Well you've got to consider what's going on at the low end of the market too. If Chromebooks are eating into Windows laptop sales and mostly running ARM, and Apple switches to ARM for some or many of its high end computers, which make up more than 50% of that market segment, that's definitely some bad news for Intel. It won't kill them though, just push them out of the consumer desktop/laptop market.
Apple sales are less than 1% of Intel's revenue. It will mean literally nothing.
You can paint me a GIANT skeptic of chromebooks in any setting outside of education. My step-mom got one as a present (as in for FREE) from her daughters. She's BUYING a Windows laptop because of how frustrated she is that it works with exactly nothing. Can't use her fitbit. Can't update her GPS. No way to sync her iPhone. etc. etc. etc.
It's a niche product for nerds. Any standard consumer will purchase one and never buy a second once they figure out all the limitations of their "cheap" Chromebook. That's ignoring the fact that I've seen more Intel based Chromebooks in the wild than ARM. I completely disagree with your "mostly running ARM" assessment and the only facts I can find on it do as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook
Respectfully I disagree. It's actually a great product for the majority of non-geeks who surf the web, take a few photos and watch Netflix.
Most newer devices sync over wifi to the cloud. I am pretty sure your Mom's iPhone can do that. The number of things you need a full blown PC for are diminishing.
If she has an iPhone why would she need to hook her Fitbit up to a computer? You can do everything you need from the phone via Bluetooth. And what is she syncing her iPhone with? I've not needed to sync my iPhone with a computer in years.
Every non-tech person that I know that has a chrome book loves it.
If you have an iPhone -- iTunes for music. Since I only use Linux at home now (yes, yes -- I should look at BSD variants, another discussion), I reluctantly got an Android this year. :-(
Any song you've downloaded from iTunes will be available on your phone through the iTunes app. If you've ripped a bunch of music then I guess you are right, but I find I don't use either, and instead use Spotify and Amazon Prime Music for all my music needs.
As for ARM inside the chromebooks : currently Intel sells chromebooks chips at low prices , and for a relatively smaller segment of the market - so they're OK with that.
What happens when ARM chips improve, and chromebooks hold a much larger share?
It is my understanding that Apple purchases the highest-quality chips of the highest-quality runs and pays a premium for it. What fraction of Intel's profits do Apple represent?
A relatively small part. Apple computer sales are not that impressive. They may be a large individual conntributor, but they alone do not sell enough to make a big difference.
Yes, Macs are a pretty small figure. The new iPhone modem deal Intel struck with Apple for around $1.5 billion is a bigger deal, which would be in the ballpark of 2% of Intel's ~$55 billion in revenues.
But Intel likes Apple Macs as a show pony. Intel has for years been desperately trying to convince hardware manufacturers to make both more consumer appealing PCs and new consumer devices around their chips. PC makers kept making the same old big beige towers, with the only differentiating factors being price (race to the bottom) and speed.
Apple doesn't like to compete in that space and likes to do other things and pushes on different features of chips that allow them to make smaller machines, quiet machines, fully integrated machines, battery friendly machines, and focus on industrial design.
Intel knows this and likes to use Apple to push other manufacturers to think in similar ways. The results have been pretty good as there are now PC competitors that make things like the All-in-one-flatscreen iMac, and the Macbook Air. If you remember way back before the iPhone, the original Apple TV was Intel based and showed Intel chips in mainstream consumer non-PC use cases. (This is different than concept demos because this was a real shipping product that actually managed to make enough money to sustain itself.) Also, Apple's obsession with reduction, like eliminating ports has been good for Intel because Apple helps encourage adoption of new standards they want to put out. For example, Apple embraced Thunderbolt at the beginning and was willing to drop legacy ports while most manufactures would normally hedge by keeping legacy ports. Apple pushing hard on this helps makes the 3rd party adoption faster which emboldens manufacturers to migrate faster themselves.
I agree with you, Intel is here to stay. But let's remember that Intel only has better fabs because they've had almost unlimited resources to reinvest in them as a result of the incredibly high margins on their processors which is the result of almost no competition. If the margins on those processors fall, their investment in fabs is sure to follow.
Can't find a good source for how much of intel's sales are Apple x86, but AWS does indeed use Xeons exclusively (with some Nvidia Tesla stuff) for EC2 according to https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
