5 Things ARM Need To Do Conquer The World

The CEO of Cambridge-based chip designer ARM has declared yesterday that it will be aiming to be the dominant player in the netbook market, a segment which Warren East reckons may make up to 90 percent of the computer market over the next few years.

ARM has managed to build an ecosystem that allows it to be almost invulnerable to any rivals - including Intel - and the fact that Apple has apparently joined its growing army of supporters is a tribute to the stunning job the guys at ARM have achieved.

Yet, outside the embedded market and that of smartphones, ARM is little known and little used. Here are five things the British company behind Acorn needs to do to change it.

(1) Consumer marketing

Back in September 2009, we said that ARM needs to embark on a campaign to inform the consumers about what it is and what it represents.

Intel did it fantastically well with the Intel Inside campaign and Centrino (complete with the immediately recognisable jingle). This can be done by creating a substantial marketing fund. ARM just have to follow Intel's path and recruit big ad-spending partners.

(2) Recruit more end-user members

ARM has a huge number of what it calls "Connected Community Members" which are the building blocks of the ARM ecosystem. Think of them as distributions in a Linux world and there are 545 of them in all (with quite a few not listed).