Uhm... maybe. We'll see.
Microsoft has the attention span of a herd of cats and when they try something and it doesn't make a ton of money for them quickly, they tend to drop it. See: Windows Mixed Reality. Windows Phone phones. Surface Duo. Surface Neo... etc.
ARM doesn't really solve any real world problem for most people - it's just another complication. And even if it works perfectly and can run all existing software flawlessly (hint, even Apple can't do that and they have a far more closed and controlled environment), then people will be returning these and asking for a safer, more compatible system: ie. Intel or AMD. And as I've been pointing out, this isn't even the first time they've tried this: the Surface RT was ARM based and it came out and flopped badly 10 years ago.
Yes, it means longer battery life - but that's only relevant for laptops - and even then, we kind of reached the point of diminishing returns a while ago. How many NORMAL people use a laptop 15 hours a day unplugged and in a park or someplace they can't plug in? In reality, THAT killer feature would have been really fast charging batteries, not long duration ones.
And yes, it means cooler thermals, but again, most people aren't using their laptops in bed or with them on their actual laps. All evidence is that most people use laptops on their desks as desktop replacements.
If it were significantly cheaper, maybe - but it fails even there as ALL the new models are at the same or much higher prices than the Intel and AMD models. If I can buy an well established i5 laptop for $500 - I'm not in the market for a dodgy $1100 ARM laptop that may not run everything and otherwise really doesn't offer more benefits.
Worse, even though Intel and AMD added NPUs to their CPUs -- Microsoft kind of kicked them to the floor by requiring 4 times the performance without warning... so everyone who bought an Ultra laptop this season just got screwed... not going to leave a good taste in their mouths over "Copilot Plus" PCs - even if we assume most people want tightly integrated genLLM on their laptops (and the jury is definitely still out on that).
But the core failure here is that unlike Apple, where if you like macOS you have exactly one place to go, Apple, Microsoft is mainly a seller of software and everyone else makes the hardware - they can't actually force anyone to go in any particular direction - just do it on Surface devices and hope everyone else follows. However (and the tech press keeps misrepresenting this), they actually announced Intel versions of these devices a month or two ago as "business" models (because businesses do NOT throw out all their hardware on a whim) and contrary to the reporting, yes, anyone - even if you're not a business - can still buy them. There's just a smaller range of options and it comes with Windows Pro, so it's a bit pricier.
Is Windows on ARM a flash in the pan? Probably not. Given that everyone in the tech world from bloggers to CEOs wet their pants every time Apple does anything, ARM is probably with us for the long haul. Will it become the dominant platform for Windows?
Well, Intel has already announced a new CPU lineup for the fall that they claim blows away ARM for performance and thermals, so we'll see. My gut says this is at most a diversion, not a sea change.
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