back to article 'Gossips' say Apple will acquire ARM

London's financial district is "aflame" with rumors of a possible takeover of ARM by a company that only yesterday announced that it was sitting on a cash reserve of $41.7bn: Apple. With that amount of liquidity sloshing around, such a takeover would be by no means unrealistic for Jobs & Co. According to Wednesday's Evening …

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  1. wfl

    Interesting.

    It should also be noted that Microsoft apparently has an interest in ARM itself, as there is speculation that Microsoft will be switching (at least some) servers over to the ARM architecture, according to the following article:

    http://www.eetimes.com/224400808

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Jobs Horns

      Re: Interesting

      I have it on good authority that Jobs wants to buy ARM for ONE MILLION DOLLARS

  2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
    Unhappy

    This is bad news

    An independent ARM allowed the processor to become ubiquitous. If Apple buy and then restricts ARM technology, it gives Intel a clear playing field to clean up.

    And with Atom comes Windows...

    Google's going to have to port Android to Intel!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      erm

      Android already runs on x86. The rest of your post is also tosh, too.

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
        Unhappy

        @AC. My bad.

        Intel only announced that Atom was running Android last week (apparently, I appear to have missed it. Must have been because I had a busy week doing some real work).

        But as to Atom and Windows, may I point you in the direction of what is happening in the NAS space, where Atom is already pushing ARM out. Almost all of the recent devices run Windows Media Server on Atom, possibly because this is of use to people with Windows PC's but also because Atom is sufficiently low power that the ARM advantages are being eroded.

        If Apple were to buy ARM and restrict advances in the architecture, do you really not think that the real winner would be Intel?

    2. Raumkraut

      And the winner is...

      Sure Intel would get some more business out of it, but if (FSM forbid) Apple does gobble up ARM and shut down its licensing business, then I suspect the real winners will be the MIPS people.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Actually

      We really want MS to produce software for ARM and/or own it, because they are highly unlikely to produce their own PCs/Servers and the wouldn't tolerate limiting the use of the processors to only one company. Apple, however would bollock it up for everyone and not give two shits about it.

    4. Mad Hacker
      Thumb Down

      ARM Licenses Wouldn't Expire

      It's my understanding anyone developing ARM based technologies has long term licensing agreements. Even if they were bought out I doubt Apple could just cancel all of those. As for making chips, ARM doesn't make the chips. Other people license their designs and make the chips to their chosen specs. In fact, aside from IP that anyone can license what does ARM bring to the table?

      In conclusion... if Apple did buy ARM it probably wouldn't affect current licenses. Why would Apple buy ARM since all they have is some IP that Apple already licensed?

      Apple would be better off buying NVIDIA and AMD (with ATI along for the ride.) Maybe after owning BOTH makers of 3D cards/chipsets they could come out with a decent gaming machine..... nah nevermind.

  3. Dirk Koopman
    Pirate

    no kneecapping in the EU

    If the EU managed to bring itself to take a loooong look at the anti competitive aspects of Oracle acquiring control of some "free" software. I can't see the Nokia waiting very long to StrongArm the EU, never mind the DTI, into forcing Jobs into providing some pretty cast iron guarantees, before being allowed to buy ARM.

    In fact is Nokia going sit idly by should ARM come on the market? Then there are the other moby [is that still allowed?] manufacturers. What about Google? Even Microsoft might get in there now that is has seen some light with regard to the power/capability ratio of ARM hardware.

    Jobs will have the mother of all fights on its hands.

    1. alain williams Silver badge

      Just stop developing it

      The EU might stop it if Jobs killed ARM, but he can do much the same thing by starving the high end Cortex line from R&D funds, so it slowly looses ground to Intel. This would be much harder for the EU to police ... Jobs just says that limited funds go to the smaller chips aimed at embedded systems that don't complete with Apple's range.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Kneecap competitors?

    Perhaps the Apple might not kneecap competitors as that leads to an impoverished wider market?

    Far better IMHO to merely take a slice of the action. That way Apple gets into Win-Win other than Win-Lose or even Lose-Lose.

    I'm sure a lot of wannabees think they can outdo the Apple and all they need is the chips (and licence) to do so.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Interesting bullshit more like.

    The competition authorities would allow this why?.

    - Because they were stoned?

    - Because they were all off sick?

    - Because they were all stuck in Santander waiting for a boat?

    Seriously - to have the creators of the processors currently used in the majority of the worlds phones owned by one phone manufacturer. Only if they sell off their phone business. How likely do you think that is?

    These rumours get pushed about because some 80's throwback with red-braces and an eightball of Bolivian Sherbet up his nose wants the share price to go in a certain direction at a certain time. Just hope it's not your pension that goes down the crapper this week.

  6. LinkOfHyrule
    Alert

    Blimey oh Riley!

    ARM chips are used in like everything these days - phones, computers, games consoles god knows what else.

    If these rumours are true, could it mean established devices from rivals to Apple currently using ARM chips could be shut down. I'm guessing it would be a very silly move as of course ARM's whole business is licensing out its chips designs to third parties (or so I am ignorantly led to believe) but then again Steve Job's dose seam a bit control freaky.

    I'm worried! (urm LOL-ishly worried that is, not world war three worried!)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Would that be legal?

    I mean it'd pretty much immediately collapse the rest of the Smartphone market, giving Apple a monopoly that it'd exploit to the detriment of consumers. And all the IP that's tied up in Arm would make it bloody difficult to find an alternative, helping Apple increase their market share and further lowering the value to the consumer.

    Saying that, this is such a huge threat to the other smartphone manufacturers that they should gear up to buy an alternative.

    Also, it'd mean that I'd have to find another chip to sing the praises of.

    Boo, Hiss. Apple suck.

    1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Not an immediate collapse

      ARM do not produce processors. They license the technology, and guide it's onward development.

      The current generations of ARM processor made by people like Qualcomm and Marvel would still be produced under an existing license that Apple could do little to change (unless the Qualcomm, Marvel etc. lawyers were sleeping at the wheel).

      What they could do would be to stifle innovation for new developments and licenses, keeping the best for themselves and allowing the rest of the world to struggle on with what they have already.

      But I would hold up what happened to Mips and Alpha (and to an extent PA-Risc) as examples of what happens when a company not in the primary business of designing processors have control of a processor architecture. And SPARC may be going the same way (do you really think that Oracle are really interested in investing significant sums to progress SPARC beyond what we have already).

      I rue the day when we have just Intel and AMD (lumped together because they produce code-compatible processors), and possibly IBM if they decide to continue developing Power, are the only game in town.

  8. Nexox Enigma

    Heh...

    I read some poorly-informed financial article yesterday speculating that Apple would buy AMD. They must have gotten their TLAs mixed up : -)

    Really though, I like ARM (and AMD) and don't need to have them ruined by Apple.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    lol

    Never happen. There are bigger players that would easily trump any bid by Apple many times over. Even then any takeover by any company would have massive anti-competition restrictions slapped all over it.

    1. Drew Scott
      Jobs Halo

      @ac - lol

      Who are these "bigger" players? Apple is now the third largest US company by market cap, second to Exxon and Microsoft. If Apple's growth continues at this rate it will not be long before they are larger than Microsoft. In the last couple of months they've gone from less than $200 billion to around $235 billion, with Microsoft at around $275 billion.

  10. Macka
    Jobs Halo

    Nah, don't you know?

    Apple are just saving their cash for the day when they can buy Microsoft.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge
      Happy

      Apple taking over Microsoft

      Now *that* would be a bun fight worth watching.

      Admittedly improbable at present, but MS have had a very poor decade and show no signs of having learned from the experience. Which do you think is more likely before 2020: Apple buying MS, or a Lib Dem government in the UK?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      stop, please stop, arrgh me sides ;-p

      "Apple are just saving their cash for the day when they can buy Microsoft."

      Ha haha hahaha hahahaha hahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaha, what with a mere 41.7 bn

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Of course they want it back

    Everyone so far has forgotten Apple started ARM with Acorn. The sold them off quarter by quarter during their troubled times in the mid-90s to keep alive. Now the are doing better, it's logical they will want at least part of ARM back.

    Apple invests in many of their suppliers including Samsung Electronics and Imagination Technologies.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Kind of...

      They might have started the ARM company with Acorn, but the ARM processor design had been started by Acorn and used in the Archimedes range long before ARM was spun off as a stand alone company.

  12. danny_0x98

    Smoking

    What sense does it make to buy a company, whose sales price will be partly based on its current book of business, and then stop selling to those customers? The only, the only way that makes sense is if Apple believes it can replace the demand for the customers it shut off. No way.

    Plus, they put their own processor, which is to say one that was developed through its acquisition of PA Semi, into the iPad, so there's yet another reason why the thought of an acquisition of ARM makes no sense.

    Apple may be evil, but it isn't stupid.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Jobs Horns

      Re: Smoking

      I dunno. I'm sure that it keeps His Steveiness awake at night thinking about this bit called a "CPU" that Apple are heavily dependant on but do not own and control outright.

      Owning a CPU architecture and thus having the final say over how and which way it develops would seem to me to be the missing piece in the monolithic construct of paranoid control-freakery that is the Apple jigsaw.

      1. Tjalf Boris Prößdorf
        Jobs Halo

        Its not called control freakery,

        its called vertical integration.

        Which is perfectly legitimate and in the days before the outsourcing mania (much of which now turns out to have been exploitative or even fraudulent) was seen as a business goal to strive for.

    2. Robin

      re: Smoking

      Why let facts and common sense get in the way of Apple-hating?

    3. Eugene Crosser
      Alert

      Re: Smoking

      Apple's not stupid. Purportedly, they may gain much more by choking their competition than by continuing to sell ARM licenses. Disturbing (and hopefully not coming true...)

    4. chuckc
      Thumb Down

      Their own processor

      ... actually has an ARM Cortex-A8 core inside, the IP for which they have to license from ARM. So in terms of royalties it does make sense to own ARM, since they would then be able to use their cores without incurring any expenses

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Apple RISC Machines

    First Rowntree, then Cadbury. Even Thames Water gets tossed between the French and Germans like the office tart. Now ARM. It'll be Tesco next.

    From small Acorns, tall Apples grow.

  14. DJV Silver badge
    Alert

    In a word....

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

    1. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
      Jobs Horns

      psychic echoes....

      My exact thoughts...

    2. LinkOfHyrule
      Paris Hilton

      Dude....

      Dude, that "No!" is so big, it's buggered up the page rendering in my Firefox!

      Paris cos she's impressed with big 'uns but I'm not! lol

  15. Vulch
    Headmaster

    Cyclic history...

    So the Acorn Risc Machine was spun off and became the Advanced Risc Machine because Apple wanted to use the processor in the Newton but didn't want it to be under the control of a rival computer company.

    Twenty years later....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Also

      A rival computer company they had just tried to sue out of existence, due to the RISC OS desktop... No Acorn RISC machines were ever released in the US, because of Apple.

  16. Eddy Ito

    And the next day

    Headline: Apple to ARM wrestle MIPS into every cell phone.

    MIPS Technologies shares soar as phone makers scramble to switch, Chinese company Loongson has long head start. In other news, Oracle in talks with Google about consortium to merge MIPS with Sparc architecture and open source the new chip.

    My guess is that other chip makers will be happy to take up the slack should ARM wind up subject to Apples T&Cs.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And the day after

      There are plenty of alternatives. ATMEL, for example, is a large company with experience in designing and manufacturing low current RISC processors.

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        ATMEL

        ATMEL are ARM licensees. They have a series of ARM7 and ARM9 based products.

        Below this, they have the AVR Microcontrollers, which are much simpler beasts.

        Do you think that there is much overlap? I don't think so.

        So they have the fab. and they have what looks like their own range of micro-controllers. How long would it take to develop their 32 bit AVR to provide the ARM functionality? By which time, everybody else would have switched to Atom or whatever lower power processor Intel has in the pipeline.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Jobs Horns

        Atmel and ARM

        Atmel have licensed ARM IP in many of their designs. ARM hold a lot of IP on chip design in general - not just CPU cores.

      3. Mage Silver badge
        Linux

        Alternatives? What alternatives?

        The high end Atmel and the PA Semi use ARM licensed core.

        Microchip use MIPS core for 32F series.

        Qualcomm, PA, Samsung, Analog Devices, Freescale (Ex Motorola), Intel(they didn't sell all ARM to Marvell), Marvell, Nat. Semi. NXP (ex philips) Atmel, Renesas (formerly Hitachi and Mitsubishi), Sony, Broadcomm, Infineon, Toshiba, Texas, NEC, Fujitsu, Zilog and many others licence ARM cores or IP.

        ARMs account for over 75% of all 32-bit embedded CPUs. The new Cortex M series (priced down to $1 go after Microchip/AVR/Atmel/8051 8bit and 16bit embedded CPU markets. The Cortex A series chase the Atom MID/Netbook market.

        Also other ARMs displacing MIPS, ST20 etc. and x86/Geodes from Routers and Setboxes.

        ARM powers more than Smart phones. At least 80% of phones use ARM

        Public Licences:

        http://www.arm.com/products/processors/licensees.php

        This would be like MS buying Via, AMD and Intel to prevent production of Apple Mac and Linux PCs.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        atmel

        ... of which the 32 bitters are of course arm 7 based. Still waiting for their Cortex offerings to materialize.

  17. Daniel B.
    Alert

    DON'T.

    Apple would only have two motivations to buy ARM:

    - It wants a stranglehold on the predominant chip, so it will hog it and make it an Apple exclusive. That would screw up all other mobile producers real good.

    - It is still allied with Intel, and plans to murder ARM so that Intel will reign supreme with its crappy Atom chip.

    None of those options look good. I hope this is just a stupid rumor, similar to the AMD switch from last week. Otherwise, I'm going to be pretty mad!

    1. Dexter
      Terminator

      @DON'T

      Apple would only have two motivations to buy ARM:

      - It wants a stranglehold on the predominant chip, so it will hog it and make it an Apple exclusive. That would screw up all other mobile producers real good.

      - It is still allied with Intel, and plans to murder ARM so that Intel will reign supreme with its crappy Atom chip.

      -----------------

      Surely the most obvious motivation would be:

      - It wants the massive license income from the ARM chips everyone uses.

      Why kill the goose? There's a massive revenue stream there.

      1. behzad
        Alert

        Massive income?

        £40m is peanuts compared to the $8 *billion* Apple made last year. ARM chips may be in virtually every handheld device going, but the money they make on each of those is pennies.For its share price, ARM's earnings are not attractive in the least.

        And so it can only be a tactical move, a move that just has to be blocked by the competition authorities. And that's if this isn't complete BS (which it probably is).

  18. Lance 3

    Counteroffers

    I would expect any offer that Apple could make that a counteroffer would be made by a consortium. Who all would be in it, Ti, Nokia, Qualcomm, Google, Motorola, SE, Samsung, ST Microelectronics, Freesacle, Nvidia among others. If their license is in jeopardy, they will either fork the money over now or have to spend money on R&D and find another chip.

    I would expect that if Apple did win, various governments would only allow it if Apple didn't cancel any of the licenses. Even then, I would expect companies to start looking at alternatives.

    1. Steve Evans
      Jobs Horns

      Keep going...

      If it's portable and battery powered, the odds are it has an ARM processor in it... Sat-navs (Tomtom), MP3 players (Archos), games (Nintendo DS(i) has an ARM7 *and* an ARM9).

      These things are everywhere! I wouldn't be surprised to find there are more ARM core processors running on the planet than Windows operating systems! (And I don't just mean cos half of the windows machines are crashing instead of running!).

      /me comes over all patriotic and stands to attention as he starts humming "God save the queen".

      As for Apple buying them... God help us all!

      1. LinkOfHyrule
        Thumb Up

        I believe there are

        I believe there are more ARM chips about than Windows installs if I am remembering my nerd trivia correct.

      2. MinionZero
        Unhappy

        2 years ago, ARM Achieved 10 Billion Processor Milestone...

        There are far more ARM cpu's than PC's in the world. e.g. Here's a press link about it, i.e. "ARM Achieves 10 Billion Processor Milestone" and it also says "we forecast that this number will continue to grow, approaching 5 billion per year by 2011"

        http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/19720.php

        Its a nightmare that Apple would even think of trying to control ARM. Up until now ARM have been very open to exploring new markets, which has greatly helped it spread. With Apple's controlling attitude, they would do the exact opposite, and put off new development of ARM based products, due to companies fearing that future generations of products could come under stronger control from Apple who would be a direct competitor as well as component supplier. Thats simply unacceptable for most companies to risk that level of control over them.

        This is very bad news.

        :(

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @Lance 3

    Actually that doesn't sound to bad...

    - Steve Jobs has a stroke (not a stroke of genious - the other kind) and decides to buy ARM Holdings.

    - ARM holdings is bought by a consortium of every other silicon/electronics manufacturer on the planet (called 'Everybody But Apple Ltd').

    - Said consortium says ARM processors can only be used by everybody but Apple :-)

    - Next gen iPad is powered by a 8-bit PIC MCU. Does not sell so well but the Steven Fry still likes it.

    1. Rob Beard
      Coffee/keyboard

      That made me laugh!!!

      ... time to order a new laptop, this one is soaked in tea. :-)

      Rob

    2. LinkOfHyrule
      Joke

      Apple II Pad

      They could bring out an iPad based on the Apple II (or is that Apple ][ - i'm not a fanboi I don't know the scripture) I'd probably actually buy one of those!

  20. This post has been deleted by its author

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo......................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

  22. Nick Kew
    Stop

    No

    Speaking as an ARM shareholder ...

    ... I'm not selling!

  23. Charles Manning

    Gossip, gossip, gossip

    Perhaps someone heard "Apple is going to buy an ARM chip maker" and could not tell the difference between that and buying ARM.

    But what's in it for Apple? There just does not seem to be any sense in trying to take over the whole ARM industry. Likely many ARM employees would leave and an IP-centric organisation like ARM is really only just the sum of their grey matter.

    Some partial ownership perhaps makes sense.

  24. Anonymous Hero
    Coat

    Who's arms?

    I would never want to buy one of Steve Jobs' arms!!

    I already have two perfectly good ones.

  25. Mikel

    Buying your suppliers

    Sometimes buying your suppliers makes sense. I note ARM is up over 40% this year. Somebody's liking ARM.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Coat

      Re: Buying your suppliers

      Up over 40%? Sounds like there may be more than one bidder in this game.

      An ARMs race? I've heard of that.......

    2. Nick Kew

      ARM up

      It's showing a gain of about 180% on the price I paid in 2008. That's because the price absurdly undervalued the company. Part at least of that rise is an obvious correction.

      A takeover target is usually an undervalued company. If ARM were still 80-90p, a bidder offering £1.50 to get it on the cheap might get eager takers ....

  26. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Would that be legal

    >And all the IP that's tied up in Arm would make it bloody difficult to find an alternative

    You can't copyright instruction sets, theres nothing to stop somebody else making a byte compatible ARM core. It's just at the current 5-25c licence cost it's not worth it.

    There are a bunch of opensource CPU core designs, at least for the low end ARM that could be used in a lot of devices, it wouldn't cost Nokia/Sony/Samsun very much together to make an ARM9 replacement if their lives depended on it

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      "can't copyright instruction sets"

      You can in fact patent instruction sets.

      I recommend attempting to sell an ARM clone without ARM's permission and seeing just how far you get before the first summons arrives. It won't be very long.

      1. A J Stiles
        Alert

        But patents expire

        But patents expire a lot sooner than copyrights; and once something is out-of-patent, it's out-of-patent forever. Nobody can stop you cloning ARM2 as much as you like.

      2. chuckc
        WTF?

        Re: Copyright instruction sets

        So then Marvel's XScale (now Armada I believe) and Qualcomm's Snapdragon, which implement the ARM ISA are ilegal? Or did they license the ISA from ARM?

  27. Nicolas Charbonnier

    ARM will take over the world.

    Apple is just being really scared, cause competing Android phones, tablets and laptops are coming to the market, made by a hundred different companies, all selling much cheaper and making better than apple.

    So apple's last desperate move would be to block competition by buying more IP and suing competition with more patents.

    Already today Android phones are selling faster than the iphone. Tomorrow, Android phones combined will sell 10x faster than the iphone.

    1. Aaron 10
      Grenade

      Huh?

      [Citation Needed]

      http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10191525-94.html

      And this is without the iPhone 4G coming out in a few months.

    2. Richard Taylor 2
      Thumb Down

      WEvidence

      You might be right, you may not be. A link to a little evidence if you have it would be very useful.

  28. Wrenchy
    Linux

    If they buy ARM, does that mean...

    Steve Jobs can shut down any ARM device he choses? Oh no....

  29. Smudge1039

    Frankly

    What a load of toss.

    1. frank ly
      Stop

      You're smudging the issue

      yes you are

  30. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Wow.

    There is a reason most of you aren't in a position to make strategic business descisions, and it's made painfully obvious here.

    Yes, the Monopolies commisson would be interested, as they are in every large take over. Yet again, monopoly and anti-comparative practice needs explaining. GIYF...

    Has it occurred to anyone that Apple may be looking to secure a steady income stream? What about the competative edge hive by owning the IP? The fact that they'd be ahead of the competition in terms of performance for speed and power consumption.

    Buying something like ARM only to restrict it would be monumentally stupid and ther are over 40 billion reasons why Apple aren't stupid. You make not like them, but you don't go from the verge of bankrupcy to the 3rd larges corporation in the US *during* the worst recession in a generation with stupid management.

    @the chap that isn't going to sell his shares; I suggest that you have a read of the mergers and aquisitions rules pretty sharpish!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Steady money

      I completely agree. Why buy ARM to then try to restrict access when, as mentioned above far too many times, EVERYONE is using them?

      Why not just sell them to everyone else ensuring lots of pennies coming in, while using the juiciest tech for themselves?

    2. Nick Kew

      your last para

      I'm (sufficiently) well aware of the rules. I just thought the whole notion sufficiently preposterous not to call for further comment.

      And yes, it would in principle be like Oracle buying Sun (you don't get to be a hundred-billion-dollar company by under-utilising your assets)! Except, Sun's stockmarket performance made it a ripe takeover target, whereas ARM is quite the opposite.

  31. Cody
    WTF?

    I speak for all fellow apple enthusiasts!

    I speak for all Apple enthusiasts, when I say, this is just great news. We will finally have our own processor again, and we can stop anyone else from getting it. That will be great. Then all the phones in the world will be iPhones.

    But what is even greater, we will then be able to force everyone to develop for all the phones in the world using objective-c. I cannot tell you how insanely great that will be. We will set entrance examinations for developers to qualify. You don't pass, you don't develop. There will be healthy license fees to participate.

    We will totally ban porn, or what strikes us as porn, or indeed anything offensive, from all the phones in the world! Wow!

    Meanwhile, we will have our own office suite. This has always been a problem, MS makes the office suite we use now. We want our own! That is what iWork is going to be. We will then stop MS Office running on our machines, to general rejoicing.

    Finally, it will be the turn of those counter revolutionary deviationists at Adobe. We will have our own photo editing suite also, and we will exile those clowns, just as we exiled their awful flash stuff.

    Oh, we can't wait. its going to be insanely great! We are going to be free at last!

    1. harrydeo

      Great Comment but wont hapen

      Hi Great Sense of humor. Appreciate it.

  32. hahnchen
    FAIL

    This is ridiculous

    It's not going to happen. And it's not going to happen because Apple aren't the only tech giants around with significant cash piles.

    Every other company - (Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Intel et al) would just gobble up enough chunks of ARM to block an acquisition. And you can be certain that the ARM board would be dead against committing suicide for the sake of Apple dominance.

    This rumour is absolute bullshit.

  33. SlabMan

    You won't get much 'chipmaking'expertise from buying ARM

    ARM don't make 'em. They just design them.

    Apple uses ARM processors because of low commodity pricing and rapid, market-driven, innovation. If they bought ARM, and cut off the rights for all other licensees, their main drivers for using ARM would disappear.

    Processors are no longer differentiators. It's what you do with them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      Blinkered view?

      You obviously don't work in the industry.

      ARM has a very good IP portfolio and the expertise to use it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Flame

        Re: Blinkered view?

        "You obviously don't work in the industry."

        Join the queue of people who think they have super-special knowledge about the big plays "because they're in the industry" when they have no more insight than anyone else.

        ARM technology is attractive because there are lots of vendors shipping it, each of which are mixing their own stuff in as differentiators. Unlike the early years of ARM, the volume stuff is not oriented around singular ARM products as in "I've just bought myself some ARM 6 CPUs!" Companies go off to the likes of TI, Marvell, Samsung or Qualcomm and get a particular flavour, or they license the technology and roll their own (if they're in the semiconductor business).

        And Apple acquiring ARM would restore the original situation with the technology: Acorn owned the whole outfit and no-one thought they'd get any traction unless they loosened their grip and let other people play. At which point, some vendors (particularly in Asia) would start to look a bit more seriously at MIPS again.

        Sure, Apple could just make a grab, anyway, but I'm inclined at this point to agree with the person who thinks it's just speculators up to their usual tricks in the Business Bastion of the Britards in lovely old London town.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          What's "Special Knowledge" and "Big Plays" got to do with it?

          Do people think that all ARM does is throw RTL cores at their customers for them to implement and hope they work? If so then they are missing the added value that ARM provides with it's technical expertise. Something the OP suggested they don't have in-house.

          If that were the case everyone would just be sticking LEONs in their products.

    2. harrydeo

      ARM

      Yeah that's really takes a stupid comment. If ARM designs them and other build it. They wont be without ARM because they dont know how to/

  34. Matthew 4
    FAIL

    Surely not?

    I can't believe it would get past (whatever UK's equivalent of the commerce commission is)

    It would create a huge monopoly in Apples favour.

  35. Hayden Clark Silver badge
    FAIL

    41 Billion?

    And why haven't the shareholders demanded some divvies? Apple is no longer a Silicon Valley startup, it's a megacorp like any other, and should be paying out as such.

    Unfortunately, many SV companies seem to work on the principle of the Companies' share capital is the property of the company, not the shareholders, and see no need to provide any returns.

    The value of any share is supposedly governed by the expectation of future profilts *for the shareholder*, so why people want to buy Apple shares when they perform as well as your mattress as an income sourece, I don't know.

  36. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    Jobs Horns

    Do not let this happen.

    Ever.

    Please. If there is any grain of truth to this rumour, if anyone can stop this they should.

  37. strum
    Joke

    Hmm

    $8Bn? That's an ARM and a LEG.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Badgers

    "You can in fact patent instruction sets." ?

    Can you? IANAL etc, but

    I thought you could patent specific features, but not necessarily the whole instruction set?

    For example, wrt MIPS, there are patents which apply to the design of unaligned loads and stores. If you don't use/implement those, the lawyers will have to be busy somewhere else, but the chip can still be quite useful (who needs unaligned loads/stores anyway :)).

    "I recommend attempting to sell an ARM clone without ARM's permission and seeing just how far you get before the first summons arrives."

    There's a difference between a complete clone and something largely compatible with.

  39. Stone Fox
    Jobs Horns

    it'd make me laugh

    if Crapple forked out 20% of their war chest for ARM only to have all of the staff hand in their notice and bugger off to form their own startup company! :D

  40. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Troll

      Go on, enlighten us...

      Tell the class why you think Apple owning ARM would be anti-competative.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Utterly illogical and stupid

    '"A deal would make a lot of sense for Apple," one trader told the Standard. "That way, they could stop ARM's technology from ending up in everyone else's computers and gadgets."'

    That is most fatuous thing I have ever heard.

    Because:

    Apple does not need to own ARM it just needs to keep licensing their designs.

    Apple are a big buyer of silicon and so they already have influence over the design companies (Intel, ARM...); there is no need to fear that they cannot buy what they decide they need.

    Apple does not need to stop ARM licensing their designs to rival manufacturers; plenty of people love Apple products and chose them over the competition.

    ARM's value arises from their business model of licensing to all and sundry; if Apple bought at the market price simply to break that business model (and no longer receive the licensing revenue) then that would be hugely expensive and a massive waste of money.

    Apple would not succeed in preventing their rivals from producing compelling gadgets with long battery life if ARM ceased to exist; someone else would fill the void very quickly.

    Apple have already acquired PA Semi so they have silicon design experience in-house.

    Just because they can does not mean they should/will.

  42. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Good news for Chinese makers of weird little alternative microprocessors?

    Occasionally devices are on sale in Maplin running strange operating systems on strange hardware. Well, all right, it's very often Linux...

    But ARM is good stuff, not easy to replace...

  43. Number6

    Licence Agreements

    If you've got an ARM licence then I'm sure there's something in there that restricts ARM's right to revoke that licence without plenty of warning, and probably ties up the cost fairly well. An Apple takeover wouldn't immediately have effect because existing chips being produced by all the licensees should continue. What might change is the availability of new stuff, or its cost, so there would be a gradual migration away from the platform.

  44. Velv
    Happy

    Others

    Perhaps Apple should be looking at other complimentary companies?

    ...he suggests, doubling his stake in Wolfson Microelectronics :)

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Badgers

    PowerVR?

    This could be smoke and mirrors. If Apple were to seek to acquire a UK IP firm, ARM might not be the natural choice. After all ARM is used /everywhere/, licensed by hundreds of companies for many diverse applications of no interest to Apple. (Ever seen a Wi-Fi radio chip which doesn't use an embedded ARM for example?)

    A better fit I think, that was mentioned elsewhere in the comments, would be Imagination which Apple relies on heavily for all the past few generations of its handhelds and for which substitution would require a significant coding effort. Unlike switching CPU instruction sets, where a compiler does the bulk of the work anyway, switching from one fairly unique OpenGL implementation to another (if many other low-power 3D rendering options even existed) whilst maintaining decent performance would be properly burdensome. Apple relies on this IP as do /some/ other smartphones, so if causing inconvenience to their competitors is the aim, surely controlling this IP would be more (counter)productive.

  46. HFoster
    Jobs Horns

    Whoever said

    Whoever said that it's probably just some traders hoping to push the ARM share price a certain way is probably on the money.

    Of course, if not, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth unless the EU hamstrings Apple's megalomaniacal monopolist potential.

  47. Alan Denman

    Easy to believe.

    I can believe it.

    Sadly Britain has a long history of being thick to an insane level in not protecting any industry.

    The ARM design and licensing model leads the world with its leading low power product..

    Our politicians no doubt have IQ's lower than a wood pigeon.

  48. vyzar

    This is not going to happen for soo many reasons

    1) ARM don't manufacture product - they license technology to 3rd parties.

    2) There a LOTS of licensees to ARM technology, including plenty who directly compete with Apple (eg Samsung, Sony, Qualcomm, Motorola, etc)

    3) Some of the biggest licensees are also significant shareholders (inc Samsung, VLSI, STMicroelectronics, etc) - they are just not going to bend over for Apple without cast-iron ongoing access to technologies.

    Even *if* Apple was able to buy controlling stake, it would be financial suicide to try to restrict ARM tech to itself. It would end up losing most of the value of ARM - which is in its licencing contracts. Without royalties from licensees, ARM is, in investment terms, largely worthless.

    And that is not even considering the competition hurdles, which you can be sure *would* be huge.

  49. Conrad Longmore
    Flame

    If it was IBM or HP..

    If it was IBM or HP sniffing around ARM, nobody would really care. But if seems to be a BFD that Apple are interested.. well, they're really just a technology company.

    That having been said, it would be an expensive acquistion. Market capitalisation is about £3.3bn, but net income is just £40m. Anyone owning 100% of the shares would be spending £82.50 to earn £1 a year, which isn't great.

  50. hahnchen
    FAIL

    City "gossips" laugh all the way to the bank

    The FTSE and NASDAQ are down 1% today, yet ARM is up 3.5%, for no other reason than this scurrilous bullshit. They really are taking everyone for muppets.

    As has been pointed out already - this will not happen. Apple can't buy ARM because other tech giants with massive cash piles will take out blocking chunks of the company.

    Microsoft, Google, and every other device manufacturer out there will buy up chunks the company if Apple were to attempt a purchase. The ARM board would be dead against an acquisition, I doubt they'd enjoy committing suicide for the sake of Apple dominance.

    So it's impossible for Apple to acquire ARM, so they won't even try, regardless of the fit. So this rumour is bullshit, and yet their overbought stock is still up, on a down day. This idiot short termist gambling, based on unfounded speculation and rumour, is exactly what lead to the financial collapse.

    Oh how we learn.

  51. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Ain't going to happen

    No you cannot patent/copyright/have 'first dibs no-returns' on instruction sets.

    I can program up an FPGA today so that the same opcode is load register as it is on an ARM9.

    ARM have a vast number of patents on how to implement the CPU efficiently but there is nothing stopping me making a binary compatible version (same as VIA etc do for x86).

    There is also nothing stopping me making a pin compatible part, Intel resorted to patenting the locking mechanism for it's sockets to get round this.

    In fact one of the original design goals for ARM was that it would emulate other chips - my ARM dev kit in 1988 came with an 8086 emulator (that ran at 4.77MHz), it could also execute 6502 code. Andy Hopper was a big fan of the Transmeta concept 10years before Transmeta.

    Next the licensees of ARM are not all stupid. Customers like Sony/Samsung/etc are not going to be held hostage by some guys in a barn in Cambridge. They will all have second source clauses where if ARM cannot supply the parts they are free to take the design in-house or to someone else. These second source requirements are why Intel actually owns the rights to one set of ARM cores.

    Embedded processor design is a lot easier today than it was back then. There are dozens of equivalents of Ms. Wilson in basements all over the world that could give you a design. Remember as well that although ARM9 in smartphones is the big news, 100x as many lower power ARM cores are used in cars, MP3 players, lift controllers etc. Apple aren't interested in this market - but manufacturers would be scrambling for a replacement part.

    Finally the regulatory authorities in Europe are not going to allow it. Especially when the various other (european) phone makers are involved and can give a little nudge to the idea that locking iPhone to one service provider might also be worth looking at.

    >ARM up 180%

    Yes but the cost of the GBP you need you buy those shares is down 180% - that makes ARM (along with any other UK listed company) a bit of a bargain at the moment.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Sure?

      Try looking up picoturbo, who made a binary-compatible ARM core, then got sued out of existence by ARM...

      If you want to use the ISA, you need to license it from ARM (at attractive rates, it appears, because nobody seems to have tried pulling that one since picoturbo...). That's what Marvell, Qualcomm etc did with their ARM-compatibles.

  52. HFoster

    Interestingly...

    ARM's Twitter feeds and associated Twitter feeds are quiet. Nobody is saying dick about these rumours in Web2.0-land.

  53. blackworx
    FAIL

    Amazing how these things grow legs

    When I read about it this morning the "bid" was "rumoured" to be around 400p.

  54. Adam T

    Dumb rumour

    There's more chance of Apple buying Gizmodo for their PR.

  55. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'd like to buy ANOTHER vowel

    All technology companies beginning with "A" please be prepared to pay, and not just homage.

  56. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Wow

    One word: bad. This would give Apple far too much influence in so many markets.

  57. Zolkó Silver badge
    Linux

    Monopoly ?

    That would not make it past a monopoly inquiry in the EU. Linux couldn't be available for ARM for example. No more Beagleboards. They'd have Nokia, Samsung, TI, Micro$oft, Canonical ... against them.

    Actually, that would probably mean the beginning of the end for Apple.

  58. HFoster

    Stuff and Nonsense, apparently

    "Exciting though it is to have the share price pushed up by these rumours, common sense tells us that our standard business model is an excellent way for technology companies to gain access to our technology. Nobody has to buy the company," East told the Guardian.

    Read the whole article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2010/apr/22/armholdings-marketforces

    Whoever started the rumour has probably made a killing on the market since yesterday.

  59. Neil 7
    Thumb Up

    Importance of ARM

    While this "rumour" is almost certainly just pump & dump, one thing it does seem to show is that ARM, as an independent entity, is absolutely crucial to the diverse and ever growing mobile and low power device market.

    Perhaps the ARM share price is now beginning to genuinely reflect how important ARM is, despite the company not manufacturing any product.

  60. SIGTERMer
    Unhappy

    NO!

    oh well, there goes the embeded market.

    maybe atmel will take its place.

  61. iAMPatman

    Apple was one of the founders of ARM

    Apple was one of the founding owners of ARM (along with Acorn and VLSI). They wanted good tech for Newton.

    Apple snapping them up would just bring things full circle.

    (Folks need to have a longer memory in this industry. )

  62. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @iAMPatman

    So? We remember but what has that got to do with anything (apart from sentiment)?

    All that matters is now and the future. Just because Apple was one of the founding shareholders isn't a reason for it to buy an £8bn company 20 years later. Doesn't mean the competition authorities will give it a pass either.

  63. Neil 7
    Jobs Horns

    @Apple was one of the founders of ARM

    ARM, as Acorn RISC Machines, existed for 7 years before Apple came along.

    Only when Apple came knocking in 1990, in need of a CPU for their Newton, did ARM become Advanced RISC Machines as a JV between Acorn, VLSI and Apple.

    ARM would have continued quite happily along their evolutionary path WITHOUT Apple.

    Apples involvement in ARM is perhaps a little overstated, usually by fanbois who until recently had no idea who ARM is or what they have achieved.

    And am I the only one who is becoming increasingly appalled at how Apple fanbois seem take the attitude of "I'm alright Jack, pull up the ladder" whenever Apple try and ring-fence the internet, close out Adobe or as it's been rumoured offer to buy the designer of low power CPUs to the world.

    "I think it's a great fit if Apple buy ARM - everyone else can find something else to use blah blah". Shockingly short sighted and narrow minded, I hope they get what's coming to them. ;-)

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