“Japan’s SoftBank is bidding to acquire British chip designer ARM Holdings for $32 billion in cash. If it succeeds, it will be the UK’s biggest technology acquisition ever,” Joon Ian Wong writes for Quartz. “SoftBank is shelling out a hefty 43% premium for the chip designer, based on its share price before the bid was made. What does it get in return?”
“For starters, SoftBank just bought a critical part of the world’s computing infrastructure,” Wong writes. “ARM’s chip designs are in 95% of the world’s smartphones, including Apple’s iPhones. ARM designs have provided the foundation for Apple’s A-series chips, which power its phones and tablets.”
Wong writes, “The ARM deal would give Softbank a central position in the world’s mobile computing ecosystem and a front-row seat to the Internet of Things, which the world’s chip-makers hope presents the next great proliferation of processors.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Softbank is making a smart bet.
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Softbank to acquire Apple chip designing partner ARM for $32 billion – July 18, 2016
Would it have been a better bet for Apple to buy it and have control of future supplies etc?
SoftBank/ARM is not really supplier. They are licensor of the ARM ISA to Apple. This agreement is multiyear and not subject to change no matter who is the owner of the ARM. Apple does not need to spend money for that.
Also with Apple only paying minimum money for the ISA, comparing to, say, Samsung, that licenses ARM cores, the company does not earn much money. Samsung is also developing their own cores that in a year or two will mean that ARM will start getting less money from them, too.
A sad day for the UK I rather doubt that Japanese Ministers would be boasting about this being a show of confidence in investment in the UK had it been in reverse, they would likely be committing Hari-kari by the shed load.
Absolutely shocking decision to sell ARM to a Japanese bank.
UK Plc is going the way of the dinaosaura.
SoftBank is NOT a bank… just like AT&T is not an Imperial Walker, just like Apple is not a fruit juice company.
The UK is selling out faster than the US. What is the point of leaving the EU if you don’t make anything.
Apple does not licence ARMs chip designs, it licences the instruction set to make its own custom chips. This will have not a big affect on Apple as such as long as they can keep licence