Laptops driven by ARM chips to double by 2027: Report

Demand for ARM-based laptops is expected to remain strong even as the overall shipment of laptops will continue to decline. The market share of ARM-based laptops is expected to double in the next five years as more PC vendors are opting for ARM chips over Intel and AMD’s x86 chips for better battery performance, shows a new report by Counterpoint Research, released on Wednesday. 

In 2022, the share of ARM-based laptops was 13%, which is expected to grow to 25% by 2027. Intel, which dominated the market with close to 70% of laptops last year is expected to lose 10% of its share to ARM by 2027. AMD’s market share is also expected to shrink from 17% in 2022 to 15% by 2027, according to Counterpoint. 

The Counterpoint report also forecasted that Qualcomm and MediaTek will expand their footprint in the PC segment and launch more ARM-based laptops as they already have a lot of expertise with ARM products. The two companies are expected to launch ARM-based laptops sometime in 2024 and may see 50% year-on-year (YoY) in 2024-2025, the report added.  

Apple is currently the top buyer of ARM chips for laptops, accounting for 90% of all ARM-based laptops last year. Apple moved away from Intel to its proprietary ARM-based M1 chip in November 2020 when it released Macbooks and Apple desktops powered by it.  

ARM-based chipsets are usually not as powerful as Intel and AMD chipsets, which are based on x86 architecture. The first crop of Apple MacBooks based on M1 received a lot of flak for their underwhelming performance. However, Apple has managed to address these concerns in later versions of M series chips.  

Last year, Apple released a more powerful M1 Ultra and followed it with the M2 chip this year, which uses interconnect bus technology to fuse multiple dies and create a larger chip that can deliver a lot more processing power than a typical ARM chip.  

Analysts at Counterpoint believe that the demand for ARM laptops will continue to grow.  

“The market share of ARM-based PCs, especially laptops, could further expand in the coming years and penetrate a variety of sub-sectors. We are forecasting an increasing penetration rate of the ARM ecosystem with chip vendors working more closely with OEMs on product offerings,” said William Li, research analyst for semiconductors and components at Counterpoint.