Laptops with Arm-compatible chips are often returned to sellers, Intel says

In her current role as CEO, Michelle Johnston Holthaus routinely runs Intel’s product division and strives to understand what’s happening in retail. According to her, sellers often encounter returns of laptops based on processors with Arm-compatible architecture.

Image source: Qualcomm Technologies

«By contacting any retailer, you can find out that the main problem for them is the high return rate,” an Intel representative described the situation with the expansion of PCs based on Arm-compatible processors. Most often, this happens because things that are familiar to the user simply do not work on such PCs, as Michelle Johnston Holthaus added.

Independent statistics say that Arm-compatible processors occupy about 10% of the PC market, but the bulk of them are Apple-branded, implying the presence of their own software ecosystem. In the case of computers designed to run Windows, the share of Arm-compatible processors is much smaller. For example, at the end of the third quarter, Qualcomm processors of the Snapdragon X Elite family occupied no more than 0.8% of the PC market. At the same time, Qualcomm management hopes that in a few years Arm-compatible processors in general will occupy up to 50% of the client PC market. According to Intel representatives, so far a significant percentage of laptops based on such processors are returned to stores after purchase.

Intel management is aware that Apple has done a lot of work to distribute its Arm-compatible processors to the market. Michelle Johnston Holthaus admits that Arm will get more than it has now, but there will be serious barriers along the way: “We will have more competitors than ever, with new competitors entering the market in 2025.”