> let's be honest, Intel is vastly, vastly ahead when it comes to anything that is not a toy.
That just shows a lack of understanding of the market. Not every application needs powerful processors. Sometimes they need low-power or low-cost processors. Something is not a "toy" when it is specifically engineered to meet different but equally serious requirements.
Intel during Q3 2014 set a record 100 million processor sales that quarter[1].
During the same period, ARM reports 1.1 billion "processors and smartcards" shipped[2]. As for how many of those are in smartphones (powerful), ARM is estimated to power 90% of smartphones[3], of which 326 million were sold during Q3 2014[4].
If you're after dollar sales, Q3 2014 had them at $320m[2] and Intel at $14.6b[5].
When Intel are selling hundreds of millions of processors a year and ARM are selling tens of billions a year? That's pretty much the opposite way around.
(By 'selling processors' I mean 'licensing cores', of course, as ARM are fabless.)
That's like comparing grains of wheat to fully baked lasagnas, buddy. What matters is what the market is prepared to pay for the tech. No arguments here. Fifty:one. It's a verifiable fact just like my ipython example.
Now that does not mean that grains of wheat are not useful. As I said, I love the Pi and I own two arm platforms for which I have ambitious use cases. I just don't delude myself about who owns the performance.
Then with that 50:1 (I just checked, and it is for 2014 revenue) you're comparing the annual revenue of a company that licenses CPU cores with a company that makes CPUs, solid state drives, servers, networking equipment... so yes, obviously Intel has a higher revenue.
That just shows a lack of understanding of the market. Not every application needs powerful processors. Sometimes they need low-power or low-cost processors. Something is not a "toy" when it is specifically engineered to meet different but equally serious requirements.
ARM-based processors vastly outsell Intel processors.