Apple has significant motivation to ditch x86 now that Intel has an effective monopoly in high end x86 chips. Intel's fab process is 2+ years ahead of the fabs used AMD and ARM competitors though, so Apple switching architectures will only make sense in the long run.
ARM competes because of a more power efficient architecture; however, this difference is less of an issue if Intel's fab process can get farther ahead of the competition.
In short term(next 4 years) Intel's lead fab lead will likely continue to grow, because Intel switched to Tri-Gate(FinFET) at the 22nm node while TSMC and others will not adopt similar technologies until 16nm node(2014 or later).
Comments
Apple has significant motivation to ditch x86 now that Intel has an effective monopoly in high end x86 chips. Intel's fab process is 2+ years ahead of the fabs used AMD and ARM competitors though, so Apple switching architectures will only make sense in the long run.
ARM competes because of a more power efficient architecture; however, this difference is less of an issue if Intel's fab process can get farther ahead of the competition.
In short term(next 4 years) Intel's lead fab lead will likely continue to grow, because Intel switched to Tri-Gate(FinFET) at the 22nm node while TSMC and others will not adopt similar technologies until 16nm node(2014 or later).