There's probably people around here that are a few rings closer to ARM than I am, but my experience has been that what has made ARM great is their licensing model. PowerPC has been successful because it's not single sourced. ARM took that concept a lot further-- the ARM architecture can be bought in chip form from dozens of providers, it can be integrated into custom silicon, or for the right price you can actually license the architecture and modify it to your hearts content. I don't see any weaknesses in the model, and I think their market position supports that. They've succeeded in becoming a standard, and taking a tariff on each implementation.
The question I'm less clear on is what's best for Apple. Defensively, it prevents someone else from nabbing a key vendor. Offensively it does provide some capability to muck with the competition, but I tend to agree with those who don't think Apple would. Technically it would give them a head start on new designs, and give them control over the teams direction (perhaps pulling the focus away from these ever higher performance variants and focussing on ultra-portable, for example).
The other possibility is that ARM has some key patents in the handset space that Apple wants the ability to assert. I haven't heard mention of this though...
Or, "I like my job, I like running a company, I don't want a new boss."
The non-statement could mean any number of things depending on the personality...
I agree with cmaier-- what's interesting is that it's not a denial.
