I think the potential for the Android desktop is huge, and can threaten Intel in a serious way. Look at the Amazon Fire TV equipped with a Mediatek 64 bit quad core A72 + A53 SoC. The same SoC is scheduled to be in Chromebooks shortly.
This tiny 4 inch by 1 inch box can play 4k at 30fps, provide super fast internet browsing, Facebook, Youtube, Office apps, video conferencing and play Android 3D titles well. And it costs 64 Pounds or 90 USD! It geekbenches 1600/3500 which is pretty respectable compared to an Intel i3 which retails for around $150 just for the CPU. Why spend anything more for grandma's, mum's or a just a general PC. It also has good support for Kodi so no need for expensive HTPCs.
So here is a 60 GBP device doing a of lot of thing a traditional basic PC or laptop does at a fraction of the price, power, noise and size! This is disruptive.
The only thing holding it back is the absence of proper desktop support in Android and the relatively closed nature especially GPU of the Arm ecosystem. Also the PC ecosystem is accustomed to a much more open hardware and software playing field, and the driver scenario for ARM and Google's control of Android itself can be problematic.
Android is currently completely touch oriented and even though you can attach a keyboard and mouse, as the recent Ars review highlights [1] there are quite a few rough edges.
Remix OS is a step in that direction but it appears some of the issues are serious enough that only Google can address. A better situation is ARM being more open, Linux is already well supported on ARM so if it opens up the drivers in good faith without the back and forth of licensor and licensee that open source developers deal with, desktop need not depend just on Android.
How on earth does this threaten Intel compared to running a normal Linux distro on any other arm machine?
I already have a raspberry pi2 B set up identically to my laptop and synced with syncthing and everything just works.
If I wanted to leave Intel today I could and nothing would change at all (no thanks to android)
I'd prefer Android on my Chromebook Pixel (assuming for a second that I didn't just install Arch Linux on it) instead of having Chrome OS. I'd take a working Skype + Browser over just a Browser. There aren't any webapps that I really use that don't have a comparable in quality or better app. Assuming multi-window works, this would actually just be ChromeOS++ for me.
They also get lost in the GUI in my experience. Too many things that are clickable or possibly clickable, too much information on the page and they get overwhelmed.
With CLI, you do have to remember commands and compose things, but somehow it is easier for them. I am actually always surprised by this. More people should try to teach their older relatives some CLI magic.
This tiny 4 inch by 1 inch box can play 4k at 30fps, provide super fast internet browsing, Facebook, Youtube, Office apps, video conferencing and play Android 3D titles well. And it costs 64 Pounds or 90 USD! It geekbenches 1600/3500 which is pretty respectable compared to an Intel i3 which retails for around $150 just for the CPU. Why spend anything more for grandma's, mum's or a just a general PC. It also has good support for Kodi so no need for expensive HTPCs.
So here is a 60 GBP device doing a of lot of thing a traditional basic PC or laptop does at a fraction of the price, power, noise and size! This is disruptive.
The only thing holding it back is the absence of proper desktop support in Android and the relatively closed nature especially GPU of the Arm ecosystem. Also the PC ecosystem is accustomed to a much more open hardware and software playing field, and the driver scenario for ARM and Google's control of Android itself can be problematic.
Android is currently completely touch oriented and even though you can attach a keyboard and mouse, as the recent Ars review highlights [1] there are quite a few rough edges.
Remix OS is a step in that direction but it appears some of the issues are serious enough that only Google can address. A better situation is ARM being more open, Linux is already well supported on ARM so if it opens up the drivers in good faith without the back and forth of licensor and licensee that open source developers deal with, desktop need not depend just on Android.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/android-on-the-deskto...