Japan's SoftBank is acquiring ARM Holdings for $32 billion, according to citing people familiar with the matter. The British chip design firm dominates the smartphone market, with its lineup of chips used in 95% of handsets today.
Unlike traditional semiconductor firms like Intel, ARM does not fabricate its own processors. It licenses the IP for its designs to manufacturers like Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, NVIDIA, Apple, and others. Companies can license its Cortex processors, or its chip architecture and design their own CPU, much like what Samsung did with the Exynos M1 CPU on the Exynos 8890 SoC that powers the . The number of devices running ARM-designed hardware has crossed 15 billion last year.
SoftBank is a major investor in the tech space, having acquired stake in U.S. carrier Sprint, China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, India's e-commerce vendor Snapdeal and local ride aggregator Ola Cabs among others in recent years.
Unlike traditional semiconductor firms like Intel, ARM does not fabricate its own processors. It licenses the IP for its designs to manufacturers like Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, NVIDIA, Apple, and others. Companies can license its Cortex processors, or its chip architecture and design their own CPU, much like what Samsung did with the Exynos M1 CPU on the Exynos 8890 SoC that powers the . The number of devices running ARM-designed hardware has crossed 15 billion last year.
SoftBank is a major investor in the tech space, having acquired stake in U.S. carrier Sprint, China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, India's e-commerce vendor Snapdeal and local ride aggregator Ola Cabs among others in recent years.