Intel Corp. is apparently convinced that Apple Inc. is planning to replace its central processing units used in its Mac personal computers with Arm-based silicon instead.

In a report today that cited private conversations with Intel officials and software developers, Axios apparently confirmed long-running rumors that Apple is all set transition its Mac computers to Arm chips by 2020.

The transition to Arm-based chips is part of a larger plan by Apple to ensure that the same software applications can run on all of its devices, including its Mac PCs, iPhone and iPad products. The company is trying to make it so that developers can simply write an app once, and have it work on all of those platforms. It’s hoping to make this possible by 2021 at the latest, Bloomberg said this week.

The transition to a single app for every kind of device has already started, Axios said. Last year the company ported several stock iOS apps, including Home, Stocks and Voice Memos, to its macOS operating system. This year Apple wants developers to start transitioning iPad apps to macOS, and then iPhone apps in 2020.

The plan would greatly increase the number of apps available on Mac and would make developer’s lives much easier since it would eliminate the extra work involved. Currently, developers need to rewrite large portions of their software code in order to get iOS apps running on Mac computers.

Apple already designs and builds its own Arm-based A-series chips for its iPhones and iPads. But analysts said that any transition to Arm chips with Mac would be very tricky for Apple, involving tweaks to both its hardware and parts of macOS. The move would probably also result in compatibility issues between older and newer Macs.

“I believe Apple is capable of making a high-performance PC chip but not for its full line of Macs,” Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy told SiliconANGLE. “I could imagine Core i5 raw performance, but apps are a huge issue. Every app running on MacOS would need to be recompiled and peripheral drivers would need to be altered, too. This is a huge task similar to what Apple went through in its transition from PowerPC to Intel x86. Some apps would never work as the ISV has no motivation to do so. Emulation could be done but it slows performance and battery life.”

Nonetheless, Apple has good motivation for wanting to ditch Intel’s chips, Axios reported. It said a switch to Arm chips would mean it’s no longer tied Intel’s release cycles, which in recent years have suffered from delays. It would also give Apple more control over what goes into its hardware designs and would allow it to release new MacBooks faster, Axios said.

For Intel, the loss of Apple as a customer would be a major blow, not just from the lost revenue, but also because it could prompt a major exodus that could see it lose other buyers, said analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.

“Apple isn’t the PC leader it once was, but due to its size and profits it remains closely watched and would likely be emulated in a move like this,” Enderle said. “With Microsoft and Qualcomm actively promoting their Arm-based Always Connected Computer platform, this move by Apple could light a fire under this effort and [have a] massive impact to Intel’s PC sales volume.”

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