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ARM casts doubt over Apple bid

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Apr 2010 at 09:43

ARM's chief executive has poured cold water on rumours that Apple is preparing a bid for the chip designer.

Apple announced bumper profits earlier in the week, immediately sending commentators into a spin over likely acquisition targets for the company. The first name out of the hat was ARM - the British chip designer responsible for the chips powering 90% of the world's smartphones.

Our standard business model is an excellent way for technology companies to gain access to our technology

The speculation sent ARM's share price soaring to its highest level since 2002, but ARM CEO Warren East was quick to squash the rumours.

“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,” said East in a statement.

Apple licenses ARM technology for use in the 1GHz Apple A4 processor powering the iPad, but ARM has a market cap of more than £3 billion, meaning that any acquisition would be a costly one.

Apple refused to comment.

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User comments

God I hope not

I can't think of anything worse for the worldwide smartphone market than a purchase by Apple.

By JStairmand on 23 Apr 2010

Keep ARM Independant

Apple is the worst thing that could happen to ARM.

By M_Hamer on 23 Apr 2010

While it's possible, it's not probable. £3billion is not a lot for Apple, but it has to justify splashing out 3bil on a chip company, when it already purchased a chip company not so long ago. If it did buy it, the likes of Google, Nokia, etc, would cry "foul", as Apple could refuse to licence processor designs to its competitors.

By rjd83 on 23 Apr 2010

Intrinsity?

There are rumours in the US that Apple may have bought Intrinsity, a specialist processor design company that got ARM to run at 1GHz. Intrinsity's website has been down for a couple of days and calls aren't being returned.

By milliganp on 23 Apr 2010

It won't Happen (I hope)

Why should Apple buy ARM? Their usual tactic has been to get suppliers to provide them with cheap commponents on the back of the "kudos" of being "inside" Apple.
Even if Apple does buy ARM, I'm sure most of the key people would leave and set-up a rival company.
Finally ARM has undoubtedly signed long-term deals with some of the industry's biggest players not only for current products, but well into the future. Apple couldn't block these, so gains no technical benefit and potentially lots of regulatory grief.....

By wittgenfrog on 23 Apr 2010

It's not so much whether Apple needs to buy ARM as much as whether they could afford to lose ARM to another company. Remember ARM does not produce chips, it only sells intellectual property, i.e. it's designs, that's what makes it profitable. Now ARM arguably produce the best bang per watt CPU design out there and everybody is moving towards low power, Apple uses ARM designs in ALL it's products, you could say it is totally dependent on it, and there is no other company that comes close to producing similar cost, power, performance benefits. What if Microsoft with it's deeper pockets were to buy ARM? A rival to Apple could then starve it of a key component - this assumes that ARM is up for sale of course - just more conspiracy theories

By pauld1024 on 24 Apr 2010

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