While ARM might make more sense in a budget Surface designed for casual use, there's good reason why Microsoft may opt for Intel instead.
Earlier this week, a new report emerged online that claimed Microsoft is planning to ship a new budget 10-inch Surface device later this year. The last time Microsoft updated its "budget" line of Surface tablets was in 2014 with the Surface 3, which shipped with Windows 8.1 and was powered by an Intel ATOM processor. A lot has changed since then; ATOM is more or less no more, and Microsoft has started investing in bringing Windows 10 to ARM processors.
Full story from the WindowsCentral blog...