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ARM: The Non-Evil Monopolist
yootje writes "ZDNet is running an article about ARM, a chip-maker who controls more than 80% of the cell phone market and 40% of the digital camera market. ARM shipped 780,000,000 processors last year. ZDNet finds it strange that no one seems to have anything against this company. And maybe it is strange: according to the article many would say ARM is a monopolist, but you never hear anyone say 'ARM sucks!'. But then again, why would they?"
Maybe their lack of problems comes from the fact that they don't employ sumbarine patents, price fixing, coercion or collusion to keep their position in the market.
They just make a product that's good for its intended purpose and let the marketplace decide.
If only more companies would follow that lead, this would be a better world.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I didn't know ARM "shipped" any processors at all.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal
Using your monopoly position in illegal anticompetitive ways however, is.
RST
only designs CPUs. Do they really manufacturethem?
The article only talks about CPUs shipped, but not that ARM ships them.
AFAIK ARM cores are use by many chipmaker from Intel to TI, but arm don't sell CPUs.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Maybe it is cause ARM does not really shove itself down people's throats. Their business practices help set them apart. In addition, they embrace open source/standards and it's ideals. An example: ...the OpenMAX(TM) working group to define a royalty-free, cross-platform API (application programming interface) that standardizes access to multimedia processing primitives used extensively in video codecs such as MPEG-4, audio and image codecs, and 2D and 3D graphics. The OpenMAX API will enable library and codec implementers to rapidly and effectively make use of the full potential of new silicon - regardless of the underlying hardware architecture.
Lets see free, cross platform, standardized and hardware independent. That meets all my requirements of a good idea(tm). Also their support for embedded Linux probably does not hurt them either.
Push harder towards Open Media/Content
The government also have to show harm to the consumer (at least in the US you do - I don't think they have to in Europe). This is always the hardest part.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
There are plenty of other monopolies or near monopolies out there. Go read up on Sysco if you want one (they control basically all grain silos in the US). The ones people care about are the one that get press time. The ones that stay low on the radar, almost nobody cares about. Most people don't actually do a lot of general research, they just get in to whatever is news. You have to do a bit of digging to come upon lesser known monopolies.
i'm not saying this, that, or the other thing about arm, but if you look at the debacle of california and their power problems when electricity was deregulated there, then it is clear that for some matters, a monopoly is actually a good thing
it's simplistic to think monopoly=bad automatically
but it's also bad to not recognize where monopolies are a necessary evil due to the high cost and other barriers to competition (do you really want to wire all of california a number of times redundantly for electricity?)
where you recognize a monopoly as inescapable, you must regulate them, bind them with legislation, and watch them like a hawk... and then they are "good"
btw, here's another monopoly that just made the news, and no, they are neither good nor necessary:
us govt and de beers in an agreement to allow them to reenter the us market after a 50 year hiatus for monopolistic practices
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011102S0121
What ZDNet is implying is this: "People don't like Microsoft because it's a monopoly. But they don't dislike ARM, which is also a monopoly. That's inconsistent and illogical."
Firstly, it's highly questionable whether ARM can be called a monopoly in the sense that MSFT is, because ARM has only about 80% of its market, vs over 90% in the case of MSFT. ARM's competitors have more than twice as much market share as MSFT's competitors.
But, much more to the point, ARM has not engaged in illegal practices to bankrupt its competitors. Remember, for example, Microsoft's piracy of Stacker's technology. Remember how they broke Netscape, by reducing the price of their own browser to zero by cross-subsidizing its development. Today, MSFT is trying to strangle Linux by concluding agreements with PC vendors which prohibit sales of dual-boot systems. These agreements, forced on PC vendors by MSFT's enormous market power, are almost certainly illegal, but taking MSFT to court would cost many millions of dollars and the case would last for years. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
MSFT's attitude is, it's OK to break the law if you can get away with it or if the benefit exceeds the costs. That's why Microsoft is widely (and correctly) perceived as evil, not because it has a large market share.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Following on from her success with BBC Basic, Sophie Wilson was asked to help with the instruction set, testing it by hand, on paper !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
ARM does good business. They support they cutomers. they make good products. That's all. I don't care if they are a monopoly as long as they continue to be the benevolent dictator.
They ship exactly what the customer wants. In cell-phone markets it's common to "roll your own" processor. You basically order the ARM core and then tell them exactly what instructions you want to be in the chip. They will deliver that.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Arm have a very interesting history. They were originally setup by Acorn back in the early/mid eighties to produce a CPU for the future lines of desktop machines Acorn were producing (A3000, RiscPC's etc). This enabled Acorn to be the first with RISC-on-the-Desktop machines a long time before Apple came along with their claim to this title with their PPC based desktop machines about ten years later.
ARM were floated off as a seperate entity by Acorn (a very wise move which enabled ARM to grow where Acorn failed) with investment by Acorn, VLSI and Apple (they used the ARM in their Newton). Being a member of Acorn's enthusiast group I was offered dirt cheap shares and only wish I'd had the money to buy some as they rapidly increased in value. Part of this increase came about as ARM partnered with Digital to work on the StrongARM, before becoming rather closer to Digital, and then in turn Intel (as part of some agreement following the two large companies throwing law-suits at each other over unrealted matters). Intel's involvment with ARM enabled them to produce the XScale and no-doubt helped increase penetration in the wider mobile market.
It's amazing to see a company that I knew from a young age grow into such a pervasive entity. I still have a couple of old Acorn machines, the most powerful of which has one of the first StrongARM chips availible in it, it wasn't until a decade later that I got my next StrongARM, in the form of a much smaller Zaurus. There's also ARM's lurking in games-consoles (GBA, Dreamcast), routers, PDA's, portable music players, mobile phones, infact just about every type of small device. A Lot of people use products with ARM tech in them without even realising it.
This is all from memory, however. Here's a more accurate history.
No, they can't. They have contracts to serve. If they leased the grain silos to someone, then they have to keep the silos in good condition, repair any damages and make sure, they are fully functional. If they fail to provide the services they leased out, they have to pay hefty contractual fines. They don't have the "This silo comes without any warranty whatsoever" EULAs.
ARM may have a dominant position, but they do not have a monopoly.
Economically, ARM is engaged what is called "monopolistic competition". They have a product which is interchangeable with that of competitiors, but is differentiated from the alternative offerings. Same as Nike shoes, BMW cars, Apple computers.
In 2001 a student produced an open source microprocessor implementing a cut down version of the ARM instruction set, However not long after, ARM pressured OpenCores to remove the it from their website, and nnARM disappeared.
Maybe the reason people like ARM is that at the moment, most of their competition is from big companies and not open source. If projects like OpenCores catch on and FPGAs become cheaper then maybe open source can perform as well in that region as it does in software. Then I think people would not be happy with ARM taking down compatible products, just as people would not be happy if Microsoft went after WINE.
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
Somewhere around 90% of MS's operating system sales are to other companies, called OEMs, or Original Equipment Manufacturers. Companies like HP and IBM and Dell and Gateway and a horde of smaller vendors. It's MS's actual customers, the OEMs, who were complaining about their strong-arm tactics and abusive pricing schemes and whatnot. (Although many of the OEMs complained quietly, for fear of offending the great and mighty MS who could crush them like a bug and triple the overall costs of their systems on a whim.) The whole reason the USDOJ got involved with the question of browsers is that OEMs wanted to offer their customers a choice between Netscape and IE (this was, if you'll recall, back when Netscape dominated the market), and MS said, "try it and we'll remove your generative organs with a rusty spoon."
Anyway, the real point is not that MS has a "more real" monopoly or something. The big issue is that MS abuses their monopoly. Gratuitously and incessantly. When you have a monopoly, free market rules no longer apply (by definition), so the market has to trust in your good behavior. Which is why abuse of monopoly is called "anti-trust".
The strong arm tactics employed by
MS, SCO, etc., reflect an implicit lack of faith that their products can compete fairly in an open market. If these companies really believed that their products and services were superior they wouldn't need to force people to use them.
What does this say about the RIAA & MPAA?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.