The Survival of the Luckiest.

It looks like Intel's grip on the semiconductor industry is being disrupted by ARM. Not because ARM did something extraordinary clever, but because the world shifted to applications that care a lot more about electric power consumption than computing power. In biology this is called preadaptation.

Driven by the success of the iPad and iPhone, Apple is expected to pass Samsung as the world's No. 2 chip buyer in 2011, second only to Hewlett-Packard, according to market researcher iSuppli.

The firm is projecting that Apple's semiconductor spending in 2011 will hit $16.2 billion, surpassing Samsung Electronics, which is forecast to be at about $13.9 billion. HP will stay in the No. 1 position with $17.1 billion in spending, iSuppli said.

"This is a an indication of where the technology is moving," said Min-Sun Moon in a phone interview. "Apple is contributing to the trend of moving away from Microsoft-Intel to ARM-based systems," she said.

One of the more interesting aspects of this transition would be the abandonment of legacy applications. Especially, those that were written for the WYSIWYG environment tied to sharing/exchanging information via printed documents.