Apple rumored to buy ARM Holdings - Page 2

Apple has NO ARM IP right now.

None of those are good examples.

This would be closer to Hp buying Intel. I'm not so sure that would go over big.

Adobe doesn't license technology. The problem with acquiring Adobe is they have way too much debt to pay off. There is a reason their products are so expensive. They are still struggling to pay off the Macromedia debt. If Apple wanted to get in that space, they would probably make competing products in secret over the next few years and release them for a fraction of the cost to encourage people to switch. They are already part way there with Quartz and Core Image. Since most of the features could be factored in to their core frameworks, they would only need like three guys working in secret.

Apple has no incentive to prevent other companies from licensing ARM technology.

If you believe that you've been listening to the Tech Press. iTunes, the iPod, iPhone and other technologies (Mobileme) should tell you that Apple is no longer solely focused on pushing the Mac platform.

They have no problems delivering products that work with competitors (Exchange sync), MS Office file format export and more.

It's absurd to think that suddenly Apple's going to spend 8 billion dollars and tell 3rd parties they no longer have access to a license.

There's no downside to providing the IP to everyone willing to pay because what's going to differentiate these cores are the custom elements that external designers will put in. Apple gets a little cut of every device out there for the task of designing the building blocks.

Apple has never made an acquisition of this size in their history so none of us knows how they manage things but I'm just not seeing a lot of cruft coming from an ARM purchase.

If Apple buys Adobe they have to deal with cross platform tools for deploying on windows. They don't have that to worry about with ARM to the same extent.

Why wouldn't it be ok?
If Apple cut off its competitors, it isn't like they are hindering their competitors from acquiring chips from other manufactures using different core designs.

Business is business, it is not good or bad.

Intel were showing off their new mobile platform at CES back in January. It's based off the second generation "pine view" atom chips and is up to 50x more power efficient than their previous attempt. It is supposed to have very similar power levels to the ARM Cortex-A9 but with superior performance.

And.....

Is there any other company that makes chips? Yes.
Would this move prevent anyone from entering the chip market? No.
Would the purchase of Intel by HP hinder the ability of HPs competitors to manufacture their products? No.

Not really sure what problem you are talking about.

If that ever happens... time to buy a lot of AMD stock. I'm not sure that Apple buying ARM would be that big of a deal to competitors though. Apple is pretty much the only company with significant interest in the instruction set. Other companies using the instruction set are either embedded and could recompile their code or are using Java and could run on other platforms. Apple would need to get all their developers to recompile, which isn't the end of the world, but would be a big deal. By the time their competitors were ready to upgrade something else would have come out. Either Intel will have better performance per watt or PPC will make a comeback. With the path some of these other devices are following PPC may make more sense anyway. It allows for faster code execution by sacrificing execution unit density. With ARM you can either go massively parallel or you can tack on lots of extra special purpose hardware.

Apple is in the business of building high quality computer equipment and so doing as much of it in house makes this even easier to achieve.

Apple's not going to switch focus to chip building it's still going to be ARM doing all of the chip work just like it's still PA Semi designing their custom chips so all along Apple is only going to be concentrating on Apple computing products it just means they would have higher priority on the chips than everyone else.

Actually I just had another thought about this and it is nothing short of win win for the entire mobile industry.

What is Apple really good at? Design. Apple designs their own boards and so is pretty clued up in getting the most out of current technologies.

But what if Apple was in a position to further advance the current technology creating their own road maps? By owning ARM Apple could design awesome processors and move the technology beyond current thinking via PA Semi and license that technology to the rest of the industry through ARM using ARM's pulling power to get them built easily without having to rely on other manufacturers to design and build in such a way that fits Apple's plans.

The offshoot being that now the entire mobile industry would have this amazing technology and further advance today's technology into the future.

Apple would lead but the followers would be using top end chipsets.

What I meant was that Adobe's customers are mostly non Apple. Buying them would result in Apple selling large amounts of Windows software. Discontinuing most of it would cause an uproar.

Adobe's prices aren't higher now than they were before Macromedia's purchase. Adobe doesn't license software for others to mod and sell, but every time you buy some, you are licensing it.

When the majority of companies rely n a particular product, and you say they can't buy it anymore, thats a major disruption to their business.

You think they can just go anywhere? How would they do that? If they wanted to buy a chip that wasn't an ARM design but that was compatible with their OS, where would they go?

There is currently nowhere for them to go.

This could be construed as Apple intentionally destroying their businesses. You can't do that. Apple would be sued up the whazoo. And that's assuming that governments would even allow it..

You have GOT to be kidding!

It would be a huge deal to Apple's competitors in mobile, routers, the nascent smartbook market and its non-competitors across the whole embedded sector. ARM doesn't just supply Apple: they are the most widely-used 32-bit architecture in the world. I doubt this trader's claim that Apple are their biggest customer. Their business model that underpins their development programme is based on high volumes and wide licensing.

In short, a ridiculous rumour. Neither Apple nor ARM need this extreme form of vertical integration. It would be bad for both companies and for the market as a whole. If the shareholders of each did not prevent it as best as they could, the regulators surely will. Even Apple enthusiasts should see the utter folly of the company distracting itself from its core competencies in this way.

If Apple discontinued the Windows versions, most of those users would eventually switch to the Mac. They are going to just quit their job or stop upgrading. Do you know what the breakdown is?

There is a lot of evidence that Apple did look at acquiring Adobe last year, but decided against it.

It isn't that simple. You're essentially asking manufacturers to run their OS's in emulation. You can't just re-compile an OS. Do you know how much work is put into optimizing for each new chip update? This could take ages to do.

PPC won't make a comeback. Intel is entirely different IP.

It would be difficult, and would set manufacturers back a year or two.

I dont think the could happen anyway. Apple isn't going to buy a company like that and essentially destroy it.

I don't see the need to buy them. They can use their own in-house developed IP to advance ARM's designs as everyone else does.

Almost two thirds of Adobe's business in on the Windows side. Apple would also destroy most of the value of Adobe. Then they would have to take a massive write-off. They could get sues by customers who depend on the software. Companies aren't going to want to just switch to the Mac. That's a fantasy. Apple would have to continue the software, at least for years.

What evidence? I don't remember it.

Manufactures the chips? Yes. Create the underlying ISA? No. AMD and license have a cross-licensing deal, whereby both can use ISA advancements created by the other royalty, and AMD is allowed to use the x86-32 ISA which Intel created, royalty free. You want to bet if HP swallowed up Intel and revoked AMD's x86 license, people wouldn't complain?


See above. The x86 ISA is controlled soley by Intel, since they created it, and if HP owned them, then yes, nobody can enter the x86 chip market.


You betchya. See above.


AMD's stock would be worth zero until the justice dept. required HP to keep the cross licensing deals. Similar to how Apple would be required to keep licensing ARM technologies.

Haha!!! This is great! So much better than watching Eastenders.

So they have stock manipulators in UK also?

Apple is in the business as part of its activities of cultivating links. An example would be that while it was working with IBM and Motorola on the PPC and perhaps keeping an eye on the cell processor, Apple was cultivating Intel (despite toasted bunny fun) so that they were able to make a smooth transition of products to Intel processors.

This could be particularly important in the coming decade, as companies such as Intel (and IBM) might just bring about leaps in computing technology that the others cannot and Apple would not want to have burnt bridges.

Purchasing ARM Holdings would add to Apple's competitive edge but I don't think that they'd just cut current customers off.

I can see Apple buying a significant stake in ARM Holdings, enough to have massive influence, but not enough to have control. That way they'd keep regulators off their backs while still gaining preferred customer status forever.

However it would probably be much cheaper to get a long term "supply" contract. Chip designs aren't quite the same as real hardware, but we can still think of it like the millions they paid LG to be their LCD panel provider for the next several years.

That sure would be playing hardball, buying ARM. But it seems like their current approach of buying off the shelf designs and having a team that speeds them up is working well (look at the iPad).

Would that be a 5-speed or automatic smooth transition?

Intriguing idea, but i have to agree with the posters who state that there could be anti-trust issues that would prevent ARM being controlled by Apple.


PS: If Apple was allowed to dish out $8 Billion for ARM Holdings we'd at least end some of the talk about Apple hoarding money for no good reason.

Okay smarty pants... transition! I had to look twice even so to notice, sometimes you read just what you want. \

Anyway, if you drive a TRUE sports car you already know the answer to that!

Qualcomm, Nvidia and Intel are some of the competitors.

It would certainly f*ck up Nokia, "Drop the cases or...

...NO ARM FOR YOU!"

AMD doesn't manufacture their own chips. GlobalFoundries does the manufacturing.

The latest is ATi is moving manufacturing to GlobalFoundries as well.
ATi: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/d...foundries.html

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How the hell would HP swallow up Intel? Intel's Market cap is more than HP who has a ton of debt with their most recent 3Com acquisition.

Grow a sense of humor.

As has been already stated, if Apple were to buy ARM [something I don't see happening] they would still license their IP while keeping a generation ahead for themselves.

AMD would be different, but I don't see Apple buying AMD.

I can see Apple taking a stake in GlobalFoundries, AMD and more in ARM and Imagination Technologies.

Intel already has a strong stake in ARM and ImgTec.

Apple said they are building out 40-50 more stores in 2010 w/ 25 stores by 2011, just in China alone.

Their plans for the next campus development will be moving forward into breaking ground.

The data center in North Carolina is most certainly the first of several.

A lot of money will be pouring out of Apple as it expands. Even more will be pouring in.

It wasn't a realistic deal. The point was what would happen if they did.

1. 8 Billion is EXTREMELY Expensive for ARM. ARM is in record high. It has nearly triple itself. But unlike other company who are have these gain due to the Tsunami Low Price. ARM has been setting records days after days.
If Apple were to buy ARM, it would properly have majority of shares already.

2. Even if Apple buys it at current price ( worth 5 billion ), it has a P/E of over 80. THIS IS HUGE.

3. Apple dont save money by buying it. It is not like the biggest fixed cost was going to ARM. @ 0.1 USD per core / unit, if apple manage to Ship 500 million iPad, iPod, iPhone in the next 5 years, it would only amount to 50million......

4. AMD is a MUCH MUCH better deal if they spend 5 billion.

Yes Apple, Do it !!

Apple buys ARM, continues licensing existing stuff.

Develops the new designs, uses them in its products, but licences them to the rest a year or two later.

Nice business model.

There could be another very good reason why Apple is looking to buy Arm Holdings as Arm have recently spun-off a new tech company: Cognova.com

A sound investment. This would secure ownership of all ARM designs and prevent anyone else from scooping ARM up and leaving Apple high and dry.

The downside of doing this is that ARM will lose customers. That means that the value of ARM after Apple buys it will be lower than the value of ARM before Apple bought it.

However, ARM-derived processors are clearly superior to other products on the market and will likely hold onto that superiority for some time. That means Apple will sell more iDevices than they would have otherwise. The profit to Apple on a single iDevice is equal to the profit to ARM on, what, maybe 10 ARM-dervied CPUs? Maybe a lot more? So on net, this would probably be a big win for Apple.

Plus, I'm sure Apple is considering how awful it would be for Apple if somebody else bought ARM.

So as a shareholder, I say "do it!"

I wonder when the first lawsuit will be filled. They'll probably argue that Apple will have to let everyone use these ARM designs with no fees.

That and since the whole operation is fabless, they'd be hard pressed finding them someone to build the chips for them. That being said, I don't find it out of the realm of possibility with Jobs. e doesn't like competition at all.


Or how about just dropping the Mac OS X computer line and just focusing on iPhone OS devices. Apple moving from x86 to another proprietary standard, (especially one that is in no way meant for personnel computers and would put Apple back yeas) would kill the advantages it gained by moving to intel. Make no mistake, Apple wouldn't be where its at using PowerPCs. Boot Camp is a major selling point.


Name one smart phone chip that's currently used that doesn't use the arm instruction set

I think this merger would receive anti-trust scrutiny, but ultimately I don't think the anti-trust authorities could make a case stick. There are basically two markets involved here -- (1) the market for smart phones and (2) the market for the CPUs in smart phones. There's a little California company called Intel (maybe you've heard of them) that is trying to make inroads into the market for the CPUs in smart phones. An Apple takeover of ARM would actually help Intel gain market share, so that isn't anti-competitive -- it actually increases competition in that market. As for the smartphone market, I'm sure this would increase apple's marketshare relative to what it otherwise would have been, but probably not by a huge amount. Maybe Apple ends up with 50% of the market instead of the 40% that they might have otherwise eventually had. But 50% isn't a monopoly -- there would still be plenty of other competitors out there.

In fact, I can imagine that Wall Street will view such a merger negatively and send Apple's stock price down, precisely because of what I wrote above. That's because on the face of it, ARM will be less valuable as a part of Apple than it is as an independent company, because being a part of Apple will cause ARM to lose customers.

Of course, the thing that Wall Street will miss (and that the anti-trust people might recognize but will be hard pressed to do anything about), is that while this merger might be bad in the short run for Apple, it's very good in the long run. This would be one of those Steve Jobs chessmaster moves that ordinary Balmeresque CEOs who focus only on the next few quarters would never, ever make.

The bottom line is that the anti-trust enforcers are accustomed to dealing with shortsighted MBA types who do obviously d-bag things for short term profits. An Apple purchase of ARM does not fit that mold at all, and so it would be very hard for the anti-trust guys to deal with this (or at least that's my guess).