How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by ThePhysicist on Sunday November 29, 2015 @07:29AM (#10644446)

I think "without anyone really noticing" should really mean "without anyone in the general public really noticing". Competitors and people working in the chip industry have probably been well aware of the ARM architecture and its rise for a long time. In addition, some factors that are responsible for the huge success of this architecture have probably been historical accidents as well, in the sense that a different architecture might have been capable of taking ARMs place, but the adoption of ARM by some large tech companies and the explosion of the smartphone market made things move really fast in favor of that platform.

In general I think that the press and the general public only becomes aware of these things long after they have reached a dominant market position and are employed almost universally. It's probably sure that even now many companies that are almost unknown to the general public are working on technologies and products that will change entire markets in the future.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by diqu on Sunday November 29, 2015 @08:31AM (#10644529)

> I think "without anyone really noticing" should really mean "without anyone in the general public really noticing".

I think that's implied when a mainstream news outlet writes about it, and not some tech magazine.

> In general I think that the press and the general public only becomes aware of these things long after they have reached a dominant market position and are employed almost universally.

which seems evident, here. ARM becomes dominant -> Guardian writes about it -> the general public learns about it.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by bpicolo on Sunday November 29, 2015 @08:57AM (#10644570)

I mean, I don't expect the general public to care at all about CPU architecture...

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by giovannibajo1 on Monday November 30, 2015 @03:35AM (#10648400)

Intel has attempted brand awareness for years with its "Intel Inside" campaign. Stickers, ads, leaflets... They do strong comarketing campaigns with PC OEMs to make sure their brand is somewhat pushed to end customers. In the most unscientific statistic ever, my mother knows what Intel is, but never heard of ARM. The bad news for Intel is that nobody ever is saying "does this device have Intel? If not I'm reluctant to buy", which is possibly what they were aiming at.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by 0942v8653 on Sunday November 29, 2015 @10:15AM (#10644763)

It does matter to them, though, because if the computing market turns towards ARM tablets (tablets seem to be what Microsoft is pushing), and they get one without realizing it, they won't be able to run any of the stuff they used to be able to on Windows. Windows has a long history of backwards compatibility and if ARM becomes dominant, it will end up being pretty much pointless. CPU architecture isn't a huge difference when they are compatible, but this time it is a big deal.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by TeMPOraL on Sunday November 29, 2015 @10:46AM (#10644845)

Still, it's not something the GenPop will know or care about. From their POV, it's a product issue - this tablet does or does not run some software. It's easy to paper over 99% of those differences by... writing new software. I mean, people don't complain that iPad doesn't run vanilla MS Office.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by diqu on Sunday November 29, 2015 @11:11AM (#10644952)

Which boils down to the old "consumers view computers as black boxes" argument. The question is whether we should care about that or not, and whether the pain of not being able to run GenPop's favorite software grows too big. Being locked into the respective device's app store hides that pain to a degree. And whenever it becomes noticable, GenPop rather considers switching to a different vendor than considering the tech in question. As long as people put band-aids around the architecture, I'm not sure why any consumer would want care about the underlying hardware in question.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by digi_owl on Sunday November 29, 2015 @12:35PM (#10645303)

Thats because the computer as a mix of hardware and software is something fairly new. The home/personal computer didn't really happen until the 80s. Before then every device had a defined purpose, and if there was any software it was living as "firmware" inside the hardware.

Damn it, i still recall when people got hot and bothered about getting updates for their Nokia Series 40 phones over the air. Before than you only got it done if it was obviously broken, and to do so you brought it to the service desk of a nearby store or some such.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by jimmaswell on Sunday November 29, 2015 @11:39AM (#10645052)

Personally I like using my Windows laptop-tablet hybrid for old games from GoG, and I'm sure a fair amount of other people run old programs that aren't going to be updated for new architectures on these.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by acomjean on Sunday November 29, 2015 @08:34AM (#10644531)

The market noticed. Nice steady increase. Symbol: ARMH

https://www.google.com/finance?cid=662445

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by aaronbrethorst on Sunday November 29, 2015 @01:13PM (#10645457)

ARMH is only now back to their 2000 internet bubble highs.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by guelo on Sunday November 29, 2015 @02:26PM (#10645705)

That was just dumb bubble money. The 2009 inflection point was the real deal, ARM is one of the big winners from the mobile revolution.

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Re:How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing by digi_owl on Sunday November 29, 2015 @12:29PM (#10645281)

> In general I think that the press and the general public only becomes aware of these things long after they have reached a dominant market position and are employed almost universally.

Exception being when it affects the journalists directly, as is the case with how the media followed Apple closely even when they were a bit player in the computer world. This because media production had for better or worse de-facto standardized on Apple.

Thus when Apple branched out into the consumer electronics world, they wrote about it. This even though Apple was hardly the first, and their offering very much wedded to the Mac.

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