SoftBank May Be Selling Arm, But Apple Isn't Interested
SoftBank, the company that owns chip designer Arm Holdings, is exploring options that could include a full or partial sale of Arm, according to rumors, but Apple isn't interested in purchasing the company.
In a report on Nvidia's possible interest in Arm, Bloomberg says that SoftBank approached Apple to see if Apple might want to buy Arm. The two companies reportedly had preliminary discussions, but Apple does not plan to pursue a bid because of Arm's licensing requirements and possible regulatory concerns.
The two firms had preliminary discussions, but Apple isn't planning to pursue a bid. That's because Arm's licensing operation would fit poorly with Apple's hardware and software business model. There may also be regulatory concerns about Apple owning a key licensee that supplies so many rivals. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Apple licenses Arm technology for the A-series chips in its iPhones and iPads, and is also planning to use Arm chips in future Macs, with a transition starting later this year.
According to Bloomberg, Nvidia has approached SoftBank to discuss a potential deal for Arm, but other bidders could potentially emerge. SoftBank is also considering a public stock listing as an alternative to a private sale.
A potential sale to Nvidia or another company would not likely have a major impact on Apple or Apple's licensing of Arm technology because of the regulatory oversight and requirements that would accompany such a deal.
Companies that use Arm technology at the current time also would not be in favor of a deal that does not include assurances that Arm's instruction set will continue to be available for equal licensing opportunities.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Top Rated Comments
2. Apple uses ARMv8-A ISA (see #1). But they do not license processor core designs. Apple designs their implementation in-house.
I can think of several companies I'd rather not see taking control of ARM who'd love to use ownership to make life difficult for Apple. Yes, yes, "regulatory oversight and requirements that would accompany such a deal" should make it safe but then again...
Imagine Qualcomm owning ARM? That couldn't be good for anyone.