With the quick development of smartphone, among them the iPhone, ARM have seen its market growing at a record pace, pushing them to develop products with higher performance levels and new features. The iPad is also powered by a ARM-architecture and will contribute to the success of this architecture.
According to different sources, it seems quite certain today, that the Apple A4 is a SoC, including a Cortex A9 CPU featuring several cores and a GPU Mali from the same company. As with other computer devices, this processor will evolve with the different models/generations of iPad, but also the iPhone and iPod Touch. ARM just unveiled the successor of the Cortex A9: the Eagle. Specifications are not frozen yet, and this new CPU should not be available before 10 to 12 months, but ARM already announced a major boost of performance. This could open new market, not only for smartphones, but for Tablets and ultra-mobile communicating devices, and even TV.
Of course, all those new potential markets are currently the reserved hunting field of Intel and its ATOM CPU, while the founder takes great care of not offering ATOM for all computer devices in order to preserve its margins with its most powerful but also expensive CPU (Core 2 Duo, Core i5 and i7, etc.), it might well have to face a new opening front and get prepared for a battle with ARM.
