Ever since Apple switched to its own Arm-powered Apple silicon chips, the company’s Mac division has seen a remarkable uptick in its fortunes, with sales climbing year-on-year. Now, a new report says Arm chips could make up as much as 30% of the entire PC market by 2026.
Arm chips were rarely seen until just a couple of years ago. Apple only started selling computers backed by the Arm-based M1 system-ona-chip (SoC) in 2020, but its Arm computers had gobbled up 13.5% of the PC market by the third quarter of 2022, according to research at IDC.
Ever since Apple introduced the M1 chip, its Mac sales have seen ever-increasing growth.
Image credit: Apple Inc
But the increase in Arm chips is not entirely down to Apple. Many affordable Chromebooks are powered by Arm SoCs, and while they don’t sell in huge numbers, they’re a notable segment of the market. Microsoft also sells variants of its Surface devices with Arm-based chips inside, in a sign that other companies are considering the chips’ benefits.