I should have made clear that I meant ARM partners had 28nm devices ready. I was wandering about the title of your post. Even Intel knows that RISC is better than CISC. That’s why the x86 is actually a RISC CPU with a decoder in front of it.
I agree with you about the ARM business model. LG is the latest to choose an ARM licence because of the control it gives them over their custom SOCs. As for laptops, with Tegra 3 tablets due this year, we can’t expect Apple to rest on its laurels. So this time next year, the iPad 3 will be more powerful than the mac book. It will also be cheaper and have better battery life. Apple will have to do something about the low end of its laptop range.

ARM is doing 32nm and 28nm as well. And as soon as ARM is proven to be usable in laptops and servers it will dominate those markets also. It does not matter if Intel thinks it’s better, ARM will always win because of it’s much superior business model, opening up the IP so you have dozens of ARM chip providers all competing, differentiating, thus ARM will always be the best value no matter how much profit margins Intel decides to cut.

Intel’s new tri-gate technology won’t get them into mobile territory, but it will make it extremely difficult for ARM to crack the server market because the power reduction removes the need for active cooling

The 3D tech works on ARM chips as well, not an Intel exclusive. Just like High-K Metal Gate, multi-core and smaller nm were not.

Actually, I think most software today runs on ARM not x86, if you consider all the software everyone uses out there on the 2 Billion ARM Powered devices shipped every year. And the software delivery system of the future is through app stores, thus all apps will be working just fine on ARM if not even better.

Anyway at this moment there is nothing written in stone and we cannot tell if ARM or even MIPS will pull a bigger rabbit out of there hats.