$30 billion sounds steep though I don’t know anything about the underlying financials. But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if SoftBank got rolled bad.
That said, it also wouldn’t surprise me at all if SoftBank rolls nVidia 😂
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SoftBank May Be Selling Arm, But Apple Isn't Interested
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That said, it also wouldn’t surprise me at all if SoftBank rolls nVidia 😂
this little thing called Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory Licensing also known as FRAND. Which if a company where to buy ARM and quadruple the rates would be in violation of this agreement. And the case could be taken to court and the courts would most likely rule in the favor of Apple or other companies.
the same reason why if Apple bought ARM they would have to license it and could keep it to itself. ARM has become an industry standard there for is subject to FRAND.
Yes, there would be plenty of antitrust considerations if Apple were to buy Arm. But it could potentially take a non voting stake to finance someone else’s acquisition of it. Maybe that’s what SoftBank was hoping to broker.
my concern is, what stops a company from buying and not improving ARM or dragging the feet to do so.
I’m not sure FRAND applies here. It isn’t as if Arm is like the LTE or 5G where a quasi-government body has mandated specific IP as part of an industry standard.
A “giant” like Nvidia? Nvidia is a gnat flying around Apple’s behind. They are nothing compared to Apple. “Apple pushing ARM... isn’t enough” What planet are you from?
The keyword is if. Plus if Apple did it they would get gutted by Anti-trust people.
Yeah except it was Apple who put in all the grunt work to take such a big lead in performance
Apple used to own 20% of ARM and was instrumental in its founding. Apple undoubtedly retained certain licensing rights when they sold their portion, but regardless, any company that buys ARMS would have to honor any existing licensing agreements, which considering the enormous importance to the iPhone, etc., Apple has undoubtedly locked up for many years.
No way - the ARM deal was a steal! SoftBank took advantage of a plummeting pound following the Brexit referendum to grab it on the cheap. ARM’s royalties are a very stable business model and will only increase with the adoption of higher-power cores in servers and laptops.
SoftBank have been on a bit of a selling spree recently, which is probably what this is part of. Some analysts think they’ll only sell a minority stake to get some fast cash.
as for potential buyers? Not Nvidia, please. They are in too many competitive markets already, and work better as a licensee - for example, I wouldn’t want Samsung’s rumoured ARM SoC with AMD graphics to be imperiled by a sale.
Was hoping ARM would push into the desktop market but the attempts have been mediocre to overpriced but unable to compete in performance with x86-64. Apple acquiring ARM would surely kill the price competitiveness. Anyhow, it's a bit too little too late in comparison to price per performance competitive AMD Ryzen 4000G APUs and 3000/4000 CPUs.
Well there's a novel thought experiment in politico economics. ARM becomes Huawei "silicon" and politicians, being too thick to understand that Apple only licenses the ARM instruction set, start blowing off about Chinese spyware in Apple Processors. Yep, I'll give you that one just for the mess it would cause.
There's open source RISC-V and MIPS competitors. SiFive RISC-V looks interesting.
https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed
Imagine thinking Mac OS isn't already a red-headed step child next to Windows. For Arm to become a dominant force will have to start with Windows.
Agreed. FRAND doesn't apply here because using ARM is a choice and not a requirement.
lol - if you think that losing Apple with its measly 5% market share will make Intel irrelevant, think again. I hope Intel buys ARM and then charges Apple double of what they wanted for the Intel platform before. In all honesty: I find it extremely short-sighted of Apple to pass on this opportunity to completely control the processor market for mobile devices and their own hardware.
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don‘t worry, Apple‘s „what goes around, comes around“ strategy will ensure that by 2028, they‘ll ditch ARM and go back to PPC. And three years later they‘ll switch back to Intel. You gotta keep your devs nimble and your customers‘ purses open, don‘t you?
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you mean Apple‘s buddies?
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Some people still don‘t understand how China works. Sooner or later this‘ll blow up in our faces. And I bet it‘s much sooner rather than later.
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They‘re a giant in their core business. Apple is a complete joke in anything beyond tablets, mobile phones and, to some extent, watches. They‘re down to a 5% market share in laptops and desktop computers.
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FRAND doesn‘t apply here - companies have a choice when it comes to processor architecture, ARM is certainly not dominant here. FRAND applies to unavoidable tech, like LTE chips.
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The perpetual license that Apple undoubtedly negotiated in anticipation of this very possibility.
? There‘s no way in hell any kind of third party company would offer Apple (or any other company) a „perpetual license“.
The buyer of ARM is legally required to honor Apple's existing contract with ARM.
Nvidia is anti-consumer at its core. It will surely push up ARM cpu prices, and possibly do some tie-in sales with their GPU. Look at the PC market right now: Nvidia and Intel gets most of the profit. Wonder how these ”MXx50” GPUs pop out? Because Nvidia force those who wish to use GTX/RTX graphics in their machines buy some bundled MX chips. This is why apple or the game console makers do not use Nvidia, because Nvidia wants to make everything about it, and take most of the profit.
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Nvidia is actually a big player in the PC markets, and has a control to a extent over essentially every PC manufacturer except Apple, because they have much stronger GPUs compared to AMD. This is why graphics card price keeps going up. If Nvidia buys ARM, this is most likely to happen to phones, too.
It's not clear what your objections are. Why do you think that? Perpetual doesn't mean free, if that's your concern. It just means the terms are set in stone, subject to certain conditions. It would mean the license fee schedule would be set in perpetuity. There's no way Apple would commit to any license if the licensor could arbitrarily change the terms at some point in the future. Also, why are you talking about third party companies in general? This is a technology license, which is a very specific thing; it's not in any way like a component supply contract. It's a right to use intelligence property only. And yes, sometimes those are perpetual; or of such long term (like 99 years) that they are effectively perpetual.