I remember as a student, years ago, writing a little hobby OS for my PC and thinking of the assembly language "and this is the most popular architecture? Ye gods." It was just so arcane compared to the MIPS we'd been taught in class. I don't know if the situation has improved over the (10 or so) years, but I think that student-me would be pleased at the emergence of a common platform with a RISC architecture.<p>Sent from my Dell Streak. Hey young Jimmy! Dell have made a RISC box. It's a bit smaller than that Ultra 1 though...
Android can also run just fine on MIPS processors, and there are MIPS options available which are competitive with the offerings from ARM. And of course it has been ported to Intel's Atom processor.<p>Windows only really runs on x86 these days, but the Linux-based Android OS is not so encumbered.
<i>...and Google’s growing suite of cloud services (e.g., Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Android Market)</i><p>...that run on commodity hardware running Intel chips.
I think the most special achievement of Android is that it created a very successful mobile application environment on top of the Linux kernel. This was missing and the state of software on ARM-Linux was a set of crippled versions of desktop linux software retrofitted for embedded. Now its all different.<p>As a separate note, anyone interested in kernel-level work on ARM and Android feel free to contact me. (contact on profile) We do some interesting work on ARM Linux kernel and need skilled people.
I would suspect it won't take long until Microsoft simply <i>has to have</i> a Windows ARM build that is also tuned and/or redesigned to consume as little electricity as possible.<p>Considering the <i>backwarts</i>-compatible bloat that Windows is this might even turn out to be a good thing.
"As of September 2010, the Windows OS controlled 91% of the PC market (Net Applications, 2010), while Intel microprocessors controlled just over 80% (IDC, 2010)."<p>Not sure how Windows can control 91%, but Intel only 80%, since Windows only runs on Intel. I would think, in the PC market, Intel would have almost 100% now, since Mac OS and Linux run on Intel. Not sure what other OS he is thinking about.<p>Anyway, this is great to see, and why Microsoft is so worried. It is possible the reason they let Windows Mobile OS stagnate in the first place, fear of Mobile market becoming to popular.