ARM rains on x86 as smartphones outship PCs

Intel worried?

They should be.

It has been suggested / reported / deduced that MS and / or Apple are going to start doing proper ARM versions of their mainline OSes. Linux is, of course, already there. The OEMs (in MS's case) could then start manufacturing laptops with ARMs in them and offer customers a choice. There will always be users who genuinely need a lot of compute grunt, but most people would probably value battery life over raw horsepower.

That'd be great for end users, ARM, MS, Apple and the OEMs, but almost certainly not so good for Intel. Nor AMD.

No surprise on netbooks

People bought netbooks because they wanted a highly portable computer, and there wasn't really any other option that fit the bill. Consumers were dubious about buying such a tiny machine with cramped keyboard and screen - but that led vendors to further chop down the specs to cut the prices.

The result was an impressive achievement - a machine that managed performance so far behind that of mainstream computers that people noticed how bad it was even while just browsing the web (though advertisers with their ubiquitous flash advertisements helped with that). Combined with the cramped keyboard that makes it unsuitable for productivity, and we've got a computer that's not suitable for any use case.

If you don't need a good keyboard, get a tablet (many netbook keyboards suck so bad as to be barely better than a touchscreen keyboard) - they're more portable, sexier, and have better performance on popular web apps (because they see the mobile version of said sites, rather than the full bloat version that netbooks get) usually have higher screen resolution.

A 11.x inch ultrabook would fill the role initially envisioned for a netbook nicely. The slightly larger area gives it room for a better keyboard, and they have the performance to actually do what people want them to... but of course, they're priced too high for most people to consider them.

I'm sure we'll see ARM-based, ultrathin, 10-11 inch laptops in formfactors similar to ultrabooks, with longer battery life, somewhat lower performance, and touchscreens once Windows 8 comes out (and I'm surprised we don't already see them, running android). Wonder what they'll be called? They can't call them "Ultrabooks", AMD's called "Ultrathins" for AMD-powered ultrabooks, and "netbook" associates them with those less than stellar devices.

Intel used to do the StrongARM processor, why are they so against selling ARM chips now?

x86 has its uses but it is too power hungry and expensive for mobiles. I can get an ARM dev board for £20, Intel Atom boards are much more expensive from what I can see.

Because netbooks

became the same size and the same price as full-fat notebooks, but still a fraction of the oomph.

I would buy a Netbook to replace my Thinkpad X31 if it had a Matte screen 2GB ram / Linux / 32 GB flash (Ideally 64GB) / decent keyboard. (And it was cheaper than a similar second hand ultra portable).

The reason I won't buy one is they all have glossy screen's and cost too much for what they are.

(Even more so compared to tieroneonline corporate refurb X series Thinkpads).

Most laptops/netbooks are just so poor quality with low availability of spares that I would never buy them (At least out of my money.)

I was interested in the Lenovo smartbook until it was axed quite liked the look of the Toshiba Android netbook (But I would run normal Linux on it). Android sucks even on a tablet (I have a Xoom - really want Tizen on it).

A PC has more ARM CPUs than Intel CPUs

A typical disk drive (rotating or SSD) will have two or three ARM cores in it. Then there's the Wifi module and Bluetooth modules. Most likely ARM too. Then there are sundry other controllers in everything from CD drives to mice to power supplies. Many of those are ARM.

So every Intel Inside PC likely has a whole pile more ARMs.