SoftBank Considering Possible Sale of Arm Holdings as Apple Gears Up for Arm-Based Macs

Imagine if Apple bought Arm and then just said to rest of world "yeah, no more arm CPUs for anyone." lol

Antitrust regulators wouldn’t allow any such deal to go through unless the buyer agreed to make licenses available.

Well, they could buy it and not renew any licenses - goodbye android.

If Apple was to own ARM then it would make for a more balanced relationship with Qualcomm.

Interestingly ARM was originally a joint venture between Acorn computer ( good old BBC Model B! ) and Apple! That I never knew.

From wiki
"... Apple ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer') was developing an entirely new computing platform for its Newton ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton'). Various requirements had been set for the processor in terms of power consumption, cost and performance, and there was also a need for fully static operation ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_logic_(digital_logic)') in which the clock could be stopped at any time. Only the Acorn RISC Machine came close to meeting all these demands, but there were still deficiencies. The ARM did not, for example, have an integral memory management unit, as this function was being provided by the MEMC support chip and Acorn did not have the resources to develop one.[55] ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#cite_note-lowpowerhardware-55')

Apple and Acorn began to collaborate on developing the ARM, and it was decided that this would be best achieved by a separate company.[55] ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#cite_note-lowpowerhardware-55') The bulk of the Advanced Research and Development section of Acorn that had developed the ARM CPU formed the basis of ARM Ltd. ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Ltd.') when that company was spun off in November 1990. Acorn Group and Apple Computer Inc each had a 43% shareholding in ARM (in 1996),[56] ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#cite_note-jointeduventure-56') while VLSI was an investor and first ARM licensee.[57] ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#cite_note-57')

Imagine if Apple bought Arm and then just said to rest of world "yeah, no more arm CPUs for anyone." lol

So now that Apple extends its ARM product line (=more income after licenses to SoftBank), they wanna sell ARM? That does not compute to me.