Damn that's a significant hit. Are shareholders that paranoid? I mean, this will in no way affect ARM's total domination of the low power SoC design market, at least that's the way I see it.

These guys basically print money through licensing. It's a dream revenue model imo.

I'm completely no expert, but wouldn't it be simple leverage to lower prices?

ARM: "Hey Apple, let's talk about what you're buying next year!"

Mr. Apple: "Well, I've been talking to Intel and actually just bought some of their spiffing chips, how much did you want again? Because, you know, Intel said they were totally in to that thing you said no to..."

ARMH doesn't sell chips nor manufacture them. They license the IP so that Apple can make their own custom chips.

This is not something INTC has every historically been keen to do, and it doesn't appear that's what going on in this instance either.

> They license the IP so that Apple can make their own custom chips.

Doesn't Apple have an ARM architecture license, freeing it of having to "license the IP" now?

Further, ARM was founded as a joint venture between Apple, VLSI Technology, and Acorn Computers. Their history goes back to the day the company was created. (ARM chips powered Apple Newton.)

But if you sell plans to make chips that less people want, it'd lower the demand for those plans. Might not be direct, but I'm sure Arm cares and uses their market dominance to boost prices.

there's still an ARM core in every smartphone, whether Intel fabs it (they don't), or Samsung, or TSMC.

Intel gave up the ARM business. They have the best fabs in the world and could dominate the business... but not without cannibalizing the x86 business.

The problem is, Chromebooks running ARM are starting to be competitive with x86 ( http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-its-time-to-take-googles-pc-... ).

And now that ARM 64 is in widespread use, it can address lots of RAM, and servers could be on the horizon.

ARM devices are going to keep replacing x86 devices, ARM is going to keep moving up into higher-end devices, and the impact on Intel is going to worsen.

At some point Intel might throw in the towel and start supplying ARM chips, but at that point they will just be another (very good) fab, not an x86 monopolist.

> there's still an ARM core in every smartphone, whether Intel fabs it (they don't), or Samsung, or TSMC

ALMOST true, but not entirely true.

The Asus Zenphone 2 shipped with an Intel Atom SoC and was actually a pretty decent mid-range smartphone.

There's still an ARM core on that phone, in the modem.

Sure but Intel announced back in April that there won't be future Atom phones. i.e. Asus went with Qualcomm for Zenfone 3.

Right. Because Intel was subsidizing the x86 chip in the Zenfone 2 (and other phones/tablets) by quite a bit.

> so that Apple can make their own custom chips

Apple doesn't make chips or anything else imo. They outsource it. Just to be accurate.

Which is rather bizarre, considering the majority of Intel's modems ship with multiple ARM cores (One in the X-Gold baseband, and another running the "application" firmware implementing mbim/qmi/whatever.)