Not really, at least until end users are buying ARM machines. But honestly, I think this bit is overplayed. An extreme majority of modern developers writing software that runs on consumer computers are not writing assembly language, and most of them aren’t even writing code in languages that compile AOT to machine code. I’d argue most of the things people use nowadays run in the browser.

Desktop isn’t even the hot new thing anymore, mobile is (or, at least, was.) Ans as fate would have it, mobile platforms are dominated by ARM already. Many modern developers already deal with ARM as it is.

Going further down the rabbit hole, I’d argue that most applications aren’t even nearly CPU bound and would run just fine with emulation, and nobody will bat an eye. This isn’t really theoretical, considering there exists x86 emulation in ARM Windows 10.

And finally, most open source software already runs on many architectures, just look at how many architectures Debian supports.

It does increase load on developers, but not to a degree that would make the benefits to competition unworthy. I think a good amount of developers are capable enough to figure out how to cross compile.

Architectural splits are not new. Apple did it twice already with Mac, and while there’s no evidence of a third one on the horizon yet, it’s certainly not beyond them.

And hell, maybe in the future, developers largely won’t ship architecture-dependent binaries. It is yet to be seen what might happen with WebAssembly and similar technology.