““The reason why ARM is going to kill the microprocessor is not because Intel will not eventually produce an Atom [Intel's low-power microprocessor] that might be as good as an ARM, but because Intel has the wrong business model,” said Dr. Hauser. “People in the mobile phone architecture do not buy microprocessors. So if you sell microprocessors you have the wrong model. They license them. So it’s not Intel vs. ARM, it is Intel vs. every single semiconductor company in the world.”
… ARM licensees use a different model than Intel. The development of an ARM-based microprocessor is done in a modular way; in contrast to the integrated way that Intel builds their products. ARM supplies a license, and designers build the chip adding various other circuits like Bluetooth or music decoding on the same silicon as the processor creating so-called SOC (system on a chip). …
In contrast, Intel has a proprietary microprocessor architecture that is not available for licensing and they have their own designers and their own fabs to build chips that they sell from a catalog to device builders. … Because of the differences in business models, the markets for SOC and microprocessors are diverging rapidly with subsequent business model priorities becoming completely asymmetric.” – Article
