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Apple dumped ARM’s designs in iPhone and iPad, but hardly anyone noticed

“Apple (AAPL) dumped designs from ARM Holdings (ARMH) in its iPhone 5 and its iPad 4,” Ashraf Eassa writes for Seeking Alpha. “After years of using off-the-shelf ARM-designed cores such as the Cortex A8 and the Cortex A9 in various configurations in its custom systems-on-chip, Apple finally made a clean break from designs provided by ARM Holdings with its brand new A6 and A6X systems-on-chip for the iPhone 5 and iPad 4, respectively.”

“The point is subtle, which is why there is so much confusion. The media continues to inundate the public – investor or otherwise – with the notion that ARM’s designs represent the ideal for devices such as smartphones and tablets and that they are “‘found in the iPhone and iPad,'” Eassa writes. “This is only partially true. While Apple has an instruction set license to build chips that can understand and execute the ARM commands, Apple decided to spend a considerable amount of R&D effort to design and validate its very own ARM compatible CPU core for its mobile products, ditching ARM’s own designs.”

Eassa writes, “If you own ARM, consider taking some profits off the table. The firm’s shares are seeing very rapid P/E and P/S expansion and are now trading near all-time internet bubble highs. While ARM runs a good business, it is simply far too expensive to consider buying at these levels and is, in fact, an excellent short candidate.”

Read more in the full article here.

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