Comments on: ARM quarterly profits up 45% year/year

By: Highlights of 2012 on ARMdevices.net – ARMdevices.net

Highlights of 2012 on ARMdevices.net – ARMdevices.net — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 17:25:47 +0000

[…] Pixel Qi tablet for commercial ruggedized outdoor use Status of Ubuntu for ARM Laptops and Servers ARM quarterly profits up 45% year/year ARM Powered Sony Google TV NSZ-GS7 launched Teradici PCoIP, optimized remote desktop on TI’s […]

By: Charbax

Charbax — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:58:00 +0000

In reply to Sprewell. Over 5 billion ARM Processors are shipped per year. It's about the ecosystem, it makes no sense for companies to start using a competitor. ARM is priced appropriately. As you can calculate the license is less than $0.2 average per ARM Processor made and sold. They are using their profits for R&D in future ARM Processors and all the licensors are happy about that and they even mostly want to help ARM make sure future ARM technology is the best. It's kind of like an open source processor technology, open only for licensors to contribute towards, if a licensor contributes something major they probably get a rebate on the royalty and licensing for a while.

By: Charbax

Charbax — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:44:00 +0000

In reply to Anonymous. I don't think so. Apple represents 50-100 million ARM Processors per quarter. ARM licensed over 1.2 billion ARM processors during that quarter. The CEO says that most of its growing profit and revenue comes from a growing number of ARM licensors, for example pretty major semiconductor companies such as Panasonic, LG, Huawei, Renesas, Microsoft, all make major new licensing deals with ARM recently. It's also likely that there are yet unannounced licensing deals for the high-end Cortex series from other major semiconductor companies such as Sony, Toshiba, Epson, Sharp, basically every major company in the world wants to make their own high-end ARM Processor. I also think it's likely that Intel wants an ARM license, it'd be stupid of Intel not to have one.

By: Sprewell

Sprewell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:40:00 +0000

As for this financial data, it is amazing how little money ARM makes from their chips, $900 million/year, albeit with a fat 50% margin, is not much for how completely they dominate mobile devices. I read a comment once on some tech site where some guy said that ARM’s real advantage is that they’re using a new business model, sucking all the profits out of the chip sector by drastically undercutting Intel. If they’re still able to make these healthy margins and do it at little cost, good for them, but the fact that their revenues aren’t that great does open ARM up for competition also, as it wouldn’t take much investment for someone to come along and copy their cheaper model.

By: Sprewell

Sprewell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:34:00 +0000

One interesting revelation in the recent Jobs biography is that he actually wanted to go with Intel for Apple’s mobile devices also. However, some other Apple executives pitched a fit and told him that Intel couldn’t get their power budget down and that ARM was the only way to go to get decent battery life. Steve was torn but eventually acquiesced. It is interesting how he gets all the credit from the dumb tech press for Apple’s recent staggering success, when his biography is filled with blatantly stupid choices that he wanted but that his executive team argued him out of. For example, he didn’t want to have third-party apps at all on the iPhone but they forced that decision on him, which he only agreed to if Apple could carefully select what apps could get on his beloved phone. Hence the crazy approval process that the App store is saddled with to this day.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:46:00 +0000

A majority of those profits are riding off Apple’s successes. The blow-out quarter of iPhone and iPads made the difference.

They call it the iPad effect:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/5641f30a-4be1-11e1-b1b5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1l5f7pQjM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/31/arm-holdings-apple-profits

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/arm-thrives-as-it-inhabits-apples-core-products-6297569.html

http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/01/31/arm.up.based.on.ios.and.android.success/