I don't like Microsoft, but unfortunately I have to agree with you - Apple is more monopolistic than Microsoft...
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Apple to Make an Offer to Acquire ARM?
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I really don't know what all this talk about Apple being a monopoly is about. They don't own a lion's share of any market (except maybe MP3 players). They do control markets by being a technology leader though.
ARM on the other hand is much closer to being a monopoly in that their chip designs are in TONS of devices.
As others have said, if Apple were to buy ARM they would still license chips to the competition. They would however influence future designs and possibly get first dibs on new tech.
IMO, the iPhone OS devices are the future for Apple (and tablets are the future for the industry as a whole) and they will be developing them into full desktop class devices if and when possible. Acquiring a controlling share of ARM makes total sense if this is the direction in which Apple is heading.
ARM on the other hand is much closer to being a monopoly in that their chip designs are in TONS of devices.
As others have said, if Apple were to buy ARM they would still license chips to the competition. They would however influence future designs and possibly get first dibs on new tech.
IMO, the iPhone OS devices are the future for Apple (and tablets are the future for the industry as a whole) and they will be developing them into full desktop class devices if and when possible. Acquiring a controlling share of ARM makes total sense if this is the direction in which Apple is heading.
Apple needs to pop an A4 into their mobile line to allow a "quick boot" into iPhone OS to play DVDs and what not.
I wonder if my MacBook Pro battery would be able to make it from SF to England running the iPhone OS.
I wonder if my MacBook Pro battery would be able to make it from SF to England running the iPhone OS.
i seriously LOLd so hard it woke my wife up. She's down the hall.
The capital letters for some reason just make it perfect.
You guys do know that Samsung develops chips, RAM, flash memory, batteries, screens for others AND sell their own phones? They also have 10x the market share in phones that Apple do.
If Apple were to acquire ARM under the premise that anyone could still buy a license, then they will be fine from a regulatory perspective.
If Apple were to acquire ARM under the premise that anyone could still buy a license, then they will be fine from a regulatory perspective.
Apple IS a monopolistic company. Period. There are so many examples. iPhone, for one, is a closed product. You can only install a software that Apple say it's OK for them. No flash, no Java, no emulators... Why I can't run uae for example on an iPhone? What's wrong with that?
It will not be a surprise if Apple decide in the following years to apply the same stupid policy to Macs so you will only be able to download "Apple-blessed" softwares from a MacStore...
This is what goes through my head:
Apple buys ARM. Continues to make money off of licensing, keeping custom projects solely proprietary for Apple. Enables more complete control of product design from both hardware and software end.
Eventually, Apple incorporates ARM A4 derivatives into all of its devices. A new version of OSX (perhaps 11?) will be written to be platform native to ARM. This would allow essentially "full", unfettered OSXI to be running on all Apple devices. The only difference would be the "depth" of the user experience; those users wanting to to only iPad-like app stuff would boot up with the A4 only and enjoy ridiculously long battery life. Users wishing to do more heavy lifting or content-creation could boot up into a more OSX-looking version.
Of course eventually these devices would all be totally interoperable, as would all apps on them. Imagine having a version of "Pages" that you could purchase over the air through the App Store that, once installed, contained a version that looked and operated differently based on the product you use it with. For example, when using your iPad it would look iPad-ish. When you dock your iPad (maybe even inside a giant Apple monitor?) or connect it to your workstation iMac or Mac Pro, all the files immediately transfer and your Pages app can be used on the iMac etc in "full computer" mode.
Apple has all the tech and the framework already right there to do this. All they need is a massive server architecture (under construction) a robust MobileMe option to keep everything succinct (in progress, needs development), a portable netbook replacement thingy to push the envelope of portable device computing (iPad, in its infancy), and the design and technical capability to run different versions of its software on different chipsets and architectures without compromising usability. Buying ARM would enable more flowing software-hardware integration.
I can see the day when ARM stuff powers all Apple devices and works very well due to contiguous designing of both software and hardware for optimized performance. Imagine a Macbook with chained-together super powered A4 incarnations enabling something like a WEEK of battery life with the capability to boot into iPhone OS or OSX depending upon user wishes? In fact, go one step further and enable the iPad over time to achieve all the capabilities of the Macbook line.
It's going to happen. All the dominos are set up.
Apple buys ARM. Continues to make money off of licensing, keeping custom projects solely proprietary for Apple. Enables more complete control of product design from both hardware and software end.
Eventually, Apple incorporates ARM A4 derivatives into all of its devices. A new version of OSX (perhaps 11?) will be written to be platform native to ARM. This would allow essentially "full", unfettered OSXI to be running on all Apple devices. The only difference would be the "depth" of the user experience; those users wanting to to only iPad-like app stuff would boot up with the A4 only and enjoy ridiculously long battery life. Users wishing to do more heavy lifting or content-creation could boot up into a more OSX-looking version.
Of course eventually these devices would all be totally interoperable, as would all apps on them. Imagine having a version of "Pages" that you could purchase over the air through the App Store that, once installed, contained a version that looked and operated differently based on the product you use it with. For example, when using your iPad it would look iPad-ish. When you dock your iPad (maybe even inside a giant Apple monitor?) or connect it to your workstation iMac or Mac Pro, all the files immediately transfer and your Pages app can be used on the iMac etc in "full computer" mode.
Apple has all the tech and the framework already right there to do this. All they need is a massive server architecture (under construction) a robust MobileMe option to keep everything succinct (in progress, needs development), a portable netbook replacement thingy to push the envelope of portable device computing (iPad, in its infancy), and the design and technical capability to run different versions of its software on different chipsets and architectures without compromising usability. Buying ARM would enable more flowing software-hardware integration.
I can see the day when ARM stuff powers all Apple devices and works very well due to contiguous designing of both software and hardware for optimized performance. Imagine a Macbook with chained-together super powered A4 incarnations enabling something like a WEEK of battery life with the capability to boot into iPhone OS or OSX depending upon user wishes? In fact, go one step further and enable the iPad over time to achieve all the capabilities of the Macbook line.
It's going to happen. All the dominos are set up.
May I also add that it's about getting the latest and greatest designs first? I really doubt that IF this happened Apple would just revoke everyone's licences (loss of revenue and legal reasons) but I could see them having an exclusivity period on any new designs for six to 12 months. Imagine if the iPhone was always one generation ahead of the competition... And as someone else pointed out up thread it also means they can basically get the licence for ARM for free and focus the resources of that company on designing in a way that suits Apple's long term goals. Which, frankly, might not be a bad thing as their goals in the mobile space seem to be focused on battery life.
Uh.... who the hell told you that?
WinMo has been using ARM for a few versions now (WinMo 5 and 6 are pretty much exclusively ARM, and previous versions like 2003 ran on both ARM and MIPS).
What would they use for WinMo 7 other than ARM at this point after investing so heavily to make sure their platform runs correctly on ARM (The WinMo 5/6 emulators in the SDK are ARM emulators even).
By that logic, Sony must be a monopoly because I can't install whatever I want on my PS3 without hacking it. I guess Nintendo and & MS are too. Then again, since I can't install Flash, Java, or emulators on my Garmin it must be a monopoly.
Controlling content has nothing to do with being a monopoly. If you don't like the options available in the App Store or want to install anything you want, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, and several others would love to have your business. Apple is about creating the best end to end experience for consumers.
Whilst an outright purchase would be subject to intense monopolies examination, a partial buyout would be a reasonable longterm investment and protection against someone else getting too much influence of ARM processor design.
Sort of like when they took a ~8-12% holding of Imagination Technologies, the developer of the iPhone's and pretty much every other smartphone GPU.
I seriously doubt the rumour but it might have some basis in fact.
Sort of like when they took a ~8-12% holding of Imagination Technologies, the developer of the iPhone's and pretty much every other smartphone GPU.
I seriously doubt the rumour but it might have some basis in fact.
Great post, I have just been reading and decided to add to your POV from a different angle. From your data... 5.5B this Quarter on iPhone revenue. Now from a business perspective is not how much I save from the $200M licensing is if the 8.5B will protect my 5.5B Quarterly business should someone else buys ARM. I believe that this is how these evaluations are made, not the other way around. If you look at Apples business, they could potentially loose 20B in revenue if someone buys ARM and interrupts their business model.
Maybe ARM has someone else looking at them now and Apple could be in reactive mode. Let's see where this is headed. I personally think that it would be a though buy for either Apple or Google and have it approved by the FTC... but other things have happened before.
What would be interesting is if Apple buys AMD, they have some fabs and that could be beneficial to Apple. Not to mention a level of control and design for chips and GPU's that could blow away at anything that could persuade Intel to build for them.
Never the less it sure is fun to read through all these post and to see how the market will react to such rumors. Fun times I tell ya.. fun times ahead!!!
This has to be the dumbest rumor in the history of rumors. ARM processors are in many many many products, including game consoles and cameras as well as mobile phones. This would just kill the whole industry. It's like if Microsoft merged with Intel.
I actually feel like I'm getting this.
Apple needs a hardware platform that can keep up with its designs and its software. That's the basic problem. Apple is moving too fast for the rest of the industry that wants to bolt on features that Apple wants to incorporate into the SOC's that it needs.
So Apple buys a controlling interest in ARM, and takes the various ARM Core designs into directions most appropriate for its own product roadmaps. Otherwise, ARM still licenses the cores as it does now.
My own opinion is that Apple will sell at least some of its uprated designs to its competitors knowing that none will be able to obtain the same level of synergy that Apple will in its products. It makes good business sense in that volume lowers unit cost, and the customers will still get leading edge parts.
We might even see things like a WebKit accelerator, AVC HD or Lite encoder, and voice recognition; really anything that Apple can integrate that adds value and maintains the low power signature.
Apple needs a hardware platform that can keep up with its designs and its software. That's the basic problem. Apple is moving too fast for the rest of the industry that wants to bolt on features that Apple wants to incorporate into the SOC's that it needs.
So Apple buys a controlling interest in ARM, and takes the various ARM Core designs into directions most appropriate for its own product roadmaps. Otherwise, ARM still licenses the cores as it does now.
My own opinion is that Apple will sell at least some of its uprated designs to its competitors knowing that none will be able to obtain the same level of synergy that Apple will in its products. It makes good business sense in that volume lowers unit cost, and the customers will still get leading edge parts.
We might even see things like a WebKit accelerator, AVC HD or Lite encoder, and voice recognition; really anything that Apple can integrate that adds value and maintains the low power signature.
This isn't going to happen. There is no way they can tie up that much capital to keep it to themselves.
Not to mention that Apple needs some direction.
"We are a chip maker."
"We are not a chip maker."
"We are a chip maker again."
They need these other companies but they are finding out that they can't get along with any of them. I can guarantee that they are looking at getting back to being more self sufficient, just not sure that's such a good thing.
Not to mention that Apple needs some direction.
"We are a chip maker."
"We are not a chip maker."
"We are a chip maker again."
They need these other companies but they are finding out that they can't get along with any of them. I can guarantee that they are looking at getting back to being more self sufficient, just not sure that's such a good thing.
+1
Cheap Chip Designing and cheap Chip production cost for Apple.
They will also ahead with the latest and greatest(maybe).
I think they are just preventing Google to buy it first and don't be cut off.
Who was that one company that had to delay almost two months laptop sales for Intel chip shortage?
I'm not saying that some company played a game on Apple's back, but there's a war out there and anyone is doing anything to save their back. And I'm not saying that MS played any game with Intel either.
Speak for yourself. I believe there is a growing number of Mac users who are not pleased with Apple's actions regarding media distribution and now it seems their intentions of controlling the availability of hardware.
Apple do seem to be increasingly involved in creating customised chips for its svelte, low power devices. A good example was when Apple asked Intel to build a custom chip for the MBA. But reliance on a 3rd party company to produce custom kit for you can be troublesome, I mean thats the reason we're where we are today, because IBM couldn't keep up and well... it refocused of business churning out xbox CPUs and is part of the Sony Cell love-in.
Further to that, there's this bullsh*t about Intels new 'i' series and their integrated GPUs. Intel have a dominance over Apple in that respect, Which I guess forced them to release an unsatisfactory product update (the 13" MBP) and possibly not even updating other product lines they wanted to (I mean they could have presumably added the same integrated GPU, and speed bumps to the MB and MBA, but then there would be very little performance definition between the three lines) and being held ransom by another company must be absolutely excruciating to Steve!
Of course where there is a market with two or more dominant players, Apple can pick and choose, but in the low power, and mobile segments, they're stuck with ARM for their handhelds and Intel for their notebooks. (because from my limited knowledge, I believe AMDs mobile offerings are crap) Perhaps ARMs tech can scale up to satisfy Apples low end / low power notebook products too?
Further to that, there's this bullsh*t about Intels new 'i' series and their integrated GPUs. Intel have a dominance over Apple in that respect, Which I guess forced them to release an unsatisfactory product update (the 13" MBP) and possibly not even updating other product lines they wanted to (I mean they could have presumably added the same integrated GPU, and speed bumps to the MB and MBA, but then there would be very little performance definition between the three lines) and being held ransom by another company must be absolutely excruciating to Steve!
Of course where there is a market with two or more dominant players, Apple can pick and choose, but in the low power, and mobile segments, they're stuck with ARM for their handhelds and Intel for their notebooks. (because from my limited knowledge, I believe AMDs mobile offerings are crap) Perhaps ARMs tech can scale up to satisfy Apples low end / low power notebook products too?
ARM does not manufacture it's own processors, it only licenses it's designs to other chip producers.