Apple launches sneak attack on smartphone world with ARM bid

Apple has never played well with others, and is well known for their use of proprietary technology to lock in customers and vendors.

Despite opening their own chip design company, it must have rankled to still have to rely on Cambridge-based ARM Holdings for the basic design of their chips.

Given their $40 billion cash hoard however Apple does not have to put up with the situation for long.

Rumours are currently going round in the markets that Apple is looking to buy the chip technology company for a cool $8 billion, seeing the ARM’s share price shoot up  8.1p to 251.1p, and more than five million shares changed hands by midday.

“A deal would make a lot of sense for Apple,” said one trader. “That way, they could stop ARM’s technology from ending up in everyone else’s computers and gadgets.”

ARM is somewhat of standard, with their chip design being widely licensed by many companies, including Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Marvell and all current generation smartphone operating systems being tied to the chip design. Around 10 years ago this was not the case, with the MIPS and SH3 architectures still in use by many companies. If Apple were to stop making available further design improvements to others it could leave other smartphone makers scrambling for an alternative which no longer exists.

Can anyone think of a more evil company than Apple to own such a technology lynchpin? Let us know your thoughts below.

Source: Evening Standard via Trusted Reviews.com