The Cambridge-based company was acquired by SoftBank at a discount during the collapse in sterling following the vote to leave the European Union. It licenses its chips to any company willing to pay, which includes Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and Apple. These designs can then be edited by the licensors to their own custom specifications, depending on the application for which they are designed.
ARM’s dominance in both smartphones and tablets has seen its designs used as a way to build low – power computers. The years-long attempt to build a Windows-on-ARM system has gone a long way, but laptops like ASUS NovaGo are almost usable. Similarly, it is ARM-based designs that Apple uses for its custom smartphone chips that will form the basis of its push for Apple Silicon in their computers.
The sale of SoftBank from ARM to NVIDIA is not a done deal, and Son also told investors at an event that ARM could go public again. It was originally planned to take the company public in 2023, but that could change if Son could see a decent return on his efforts. It would be difficult to see companies turning their noses up at the opportunity to own a piece of ARM that, although small, makes up an important component for billions of devices worldwide.
ARM co-founder Dr. Hermann Hauser was a critic of the sale to SoftBank and told the BBC that a sale to NVIDIA would be a “disaster”. Since the company licensed its designs to any paying customer without choosing favorites, a partisan owner like NVIDIA could ruin the company. “When it’s become part of NVIDIA,” he said last week, “most of the licensees are competitors of NVIDIA,” which may be looking to dump ARM. Hauser has asked the British government to intervene, hoping to restore some national pride, after allowing the UK’s only true tech giant to fall into foreign ownership.
