Slashdot Mirror
Apple To Buy ARM?
gyrogeerloose writes "An article in the London Evening Standard claims that Apple has made an $8 billion offer to acquire ARM Holdings. For those few Slashdotters who don't already know, ARM makes the processor chips that power Apple's iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. However, ARM processors are also used by other manufacturers, including Palm and, perhaps most significantly, companies building Android phones. This explains why Apple might be willing to spend so much on the deal — almost 20% of its cash reserves. Being able to control who gets to use the processors (and, more importantly, who doesn't) would give Apple a huge advantage over its competitors."
There's nothing like a nice warm cup of unfounded speculation to start the day off right.
I love this quote:
"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."
And at the same time kill ARM's business! Hilarious.
Other than being able to steer the technology, I'm not sure what apple would be able to do?
Not license the design? Even though it's being manufactured by many companies, the design is still licensed. If Apple decided to revoke those licenses then it doesn't matter who was making them, the supply would dry up.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
This will be an Antitrust goldmine. And people say Microsoft are evil. Urgh.
And it is for this very simple reason that it would be blocked on antitrust grounds. Even if the slightly more lax regulators in the US would permit it, you can bet the Europeans wouldn't (ARM Holdings is based in the UK).
Jobs has, at least since he shoved Woz off to the side, been about one thing - total vertical control of Apple's platforms.
Apple has the money and the size now that they've been expanding that vertical control upward deeper into the application level of their machines via their appstore. It's not surprising to me at all that they would want to expand that vertical control down as well into controlling more and more of the hardware. That strikes me as a very Jobs/Apple thing to do.
You are aware that the TI OMAP processors are licensed ARM processors, are you not?
You mean how Apple destroyed CUPS after they bought it? Or how about when they stopped upstreaming changes to webkit? Despite much hand-wringing by slashdotters about this, they didn't do either of these things and these projects are both fine. Apple contributes much more to open source than Microsoft does and while hardware is a different beast, the point is there is absolutely no evidence that Apple would ever stop selling ARMs to competitors.
In any case, why the fuck would apple want to buy ARM? THey just bought P. A. Semi. The whole article is just baseless speculation by people whose sole purpose in life is to drive page views while having the title "analyst".
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Well, Microsoft are evil.
That said, the summary has gross understatement...it's not just Palm or Android phones, it's essentially all phones. And unspeakable number of other consumer devices (heck, in your PC there are most likely more ARM cores than x86 ones...)
This is one deal which EU might not let through.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Apple has long been more evil than Microsoft, just less successful at it. Microsoft, after all, just controls the operating system; Apple controls (or wants to control) everything from the operating system and the hardware to what kind of software you run and data you are allowed to access.
The real tragedy here would be having ARM -- whose creativity and intrepid exploration of any and all markets are legendary -- come under the control of a company with a vision as narrow as Apple's. Instead of driving the development of thousands of new products, as ARM effectively does now, it would be channeled into solely serving Apple's tiny handful of fashionable, locked-down toys while creating artificial scarcity for countless companies who are doing something more than peddling the digital equivalent of designer handbags.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
In the past Apple has avoided anti-trust because of their market share (or lack of) and real competition from the clone makers. If Apple moves to stifle competition, they can be assured that the hammer will come down. The risk isn't just from the FTC, but from Europe and Asia as well. Right now Apple enjoys 42% profit margins (IPAD and judging by what they want to for their computers, they probably make just as much off the desktop). If for instance the FTC steps in, the remedy might be splitting the company into two - one hardware, one software. The floodgates for cheap clones will be open at that point.
Right now Apple enjoys a certain amount of lock in. You must buy from their store, you must develop for their platform the way they demand and use their computer with their operating system to do so. And of course fan boys to pay them.
Do they really want to risk that?
Full Disclosure: I was a fan boy in the early 1990s. About $7000 later (at that point more than I ever spent on a car), I was stuck with outdated hardware with no support from Apple to upgrade (just buy new). I also have a G4 - also outdated. So for the new every 2 (years) fans, congrats, I'm happy for you. My dual CPU, dual core Opteron setup (with SLI) was a slow evolution from ASUS dual P3 system that I bought circa 1999. Never spent more than $1000 at any upgrade step and only 'had' to upgrade every 3-4 years.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
"Except that unfortunately Apple doesn't have the market share necessary for anti trust to kick in."
But ARM does.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/194387/apple_rejects_pulitzer_prize_winners_app.html
Yes, it would be a bad thing if Apple had won the PC wars.
Palm trees and 8
Was Google already aware of this? They bought a small processor company Tuesday. Would make sense if they wanted to make sure manufacturers of their phones didn't suddenly end up without access to processors.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I just don't know where to begin. There are several points around which the "Apple is evil, this will kill the industry" hysteria fails:
1)This is a rumor. It's a completely unsubstantiated rumor. It may be true, there are a number of reasons it could be a good move for Apple, but it's sure as Hell not a fact yet. Calling Apple "evil" for something they may or may not even be doing seems a bit harsh.
2) In the event that this rumor turn out to be true, the deal will face regulatory scrutiny from agencies in (at the minimum) the US and EU. Probably several Asian countries as well. So assuming that Apple is considering this bit of "evil", several country's regulatory agencies will have to be either "evil" or "stupid" before it becomes a problem.
3) Assuming that Apple is really planning to make this bid, and it gets by the regulators, there are lots of reasons Apple would buy ARM, then simply continue with business as usual. ARM is hugely profitable. Buying them, then continuing their business model, would simply increase Apple's profits. Of course they would guide ARM's development to make things that Apple needs in particular, but a lot of those thing are the same as any other CPU customer would want. In this scenario Apple, at worst, is getting to guide ARM's dev model while getting their own licenses at a discount. Nice for them, but not game changing.
4) Assuming the worst case scenario, Apple buys ARM, gets it past the regulators, then takes their new found power and starts abusing it; is it really all that bad? They won't simply be able to cancel all the license agreements ARM already has. They'll have to slowing cut off the supply of ARM tech to the industry as old agreements expire and new tech isn't licensed. Given that it will have to be a slow process, there's plenty of time for a new player (or players) to simply inch into the niche as ARM is inched out. I'm sure Intel, AMD, or some other company no one has heard of yet would love to take over ARM's spot.
TL;DR: This is a rumor not a fact. It'll have to get by the regulators if it happens. If it turns out that it is real, and the regulators go for it, Apple may not abuse it. There's plenty of good reasons to leave things as they are mostly. If all of the worst possibilities occur, it still doesn't seem like it would be that awful for the industry, though it would certainly shake things up.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Er. TFA say the offer is 400p a share. Currently they trade at around 250p a share. This represents a 60% premium. Given that ARM is very close to its 52 week high, at 400p it's a no-brainer for the shareholders.
I, however, don't really think that Apple is going to buy ARM. The Inquirer has a very good analysis of why not here: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1602331/apple-arm
42% profit is just factoring the cost of the parts
This is not including R&D, manufacturing, transportation, marketing etc...
That's like saying that other than mainframe software and spares, nobody had to buy anything from IBM. Or that other than gasoline, nobody had to buy anything from Standard Oil.
No, they can't, because the developer kit has conditions on what apps you are allowed to develop and install in the license, which you must explicitly agree to before you can download it.
Then you're not a console gamer. Do a quick Google Search for "GTA IV DLC PS3 2008" and you'll find endless amounts of complaining and flameage over the fact that some GTA IV content was Xbox-exclusive.
Furthermore, you're engaging in the fallacy known as "tu quoque". And believe me, if anyone offered a console that was competitive with the PS3 but completely open, I'd be all over it. It's just that consoles have always been locked down. Phones and portable computers haven't, which is why Apple's attempt to start locking them down pisses people off.
And the chip manufacturers license the intellectual property from ARM holdings. If Apple owns ARM holdings and refuses to extend the IP contracts, the chip manufacturers can't make any more ARM chips. And if Apple adds clauses to the contract saying they can only sell to Apple-approved customers, or that chips sold to parties other than Apple require a more expensive license, well...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's massively misleading to say that "ARM was founded by Apple and Acorn" and that they "want it back".
ARM was founded long before Apple got involved, and the core architecture was developed without Apple's involvement. At some point, Apple started working with them because they had some special requirements for the Newton.
Given Apple's current position, it would be an outrage if antitrust regulators allowed them to purchase ARM. And you would likely see the rest of the industry dropping the chip like a hot potato and coming up with their own alternatives.
"Apple has long been more evil than Microsoft, just less successful at it."
Um, Apple owns its share of the market. OWNS. No one does what Apple does, not do they do something else as well, or as profitably.
Microsoft is faced with competitors on every side. They are in a constant fight for preservation. And then there is their struggle with themselves, to maintain what quality they can in the face of such product diversity, demands of the market, and the other pressures including being an antitrust target every single day.
Apple is very, very successful. Microsoft also. But in different ways. If I had to buy stock in either, it would be in Apple. If I had to predict who will be around in 50 years, it is almost a toss-up to me. That is only because Apple is actually Steve Jobs. His successor will have to have the same depth of vision, same drive, same demands and standards.
And in that light, actually, Microsoft is a toss-up because so far it has transitioned from Gates as CEO. A big step.
But Apple is better at what it does than Microsoft is at what IT does.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'd dispute that. Apple keeps pretty tight reigns on its own products, but they aren't very devious and don't particularly try to break interoperability. Apple uses an open source OS (the GUI stuff isn't open, but at its base OSX is a BSD varient). These days, Macs support X11, ODF, and common unix tools out of the box. They've contributed to open source projects, including their own calendar server and webkit. While Apple was pushing the record labels to drop DRM, allowing Apple to sell music in an open standard, Microsoft was pushing them to use Microsoft DRM and distribute music only in their own proprietary format. Apple has been one of the companies leading the charge in pushing HTML and CSS standards forward.
Sorry, Microsoft has historically been far more evil and Apple. It's true, though, that Microsoft seems to be getting better these days, with things like supporting ODF, working with SAMBA, and planning to provide real/compliant support HTML5 in IE9.
Its a quite accurate statement to say Apple is a founder
It is accurate, but it is also massively misleading because it suggests that Apple participated in the creation ARM, which they did not. All Apple really did was invest in already existing technology when a business reorganization gave them an opportunity to do that.
it could be quite possible that Apple wants to go this way as an insurance policy,
Who are you trying to kid? Apple wants this to screw their competitors by controlling the chip design many of them rely on.
because they fear other big stalkers might acquire a company they are increasingly strategically reliant on
Apple shouldn't project their own rotten behavior and motives onto others.
in other words our entire tech world is already built around this architecture.
And that's why Apple cannot be allowed to have it.
How are App Store restrictions anti-competitive towards other smartphone and music player vendors? If anything that would help them because Apple users have less choice in apps.
Prices will never go below a certain level. If the unwashed masses start using Apple products then the aura of smug superiority will vanish.
Have you looked around? Everyone and their brother has an iPod or iPhone these days. I hate to break it to you, but the "unwashed masses" have been using Apple products for the last couple of years. The only "aura of smug superiority" I've seen about them are the Mac commercials and the attitudes of people here on slashdot.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."