Apple's acquisition is pure speculation! SoftBank considers selling or relisting Arm

According to the latest report from the Wall Street Journal, SoftBank Group is exploring several possible options for its British chip design company Arm, including a full or partial sale and a public listing.

People familiar with the matter said that SoftBank has hired Goldman Sachs as an advisor for this capital operation, but the action is still in the early exploratory stage. It is unclear how these plans will be implemented, and SoftBank may choose to do nothing.

SoftBank acquired Arm for $32 billion in 2016. It was reported that part of the reason SoftBank acquired Arm was to expand its business into the Internet of Things.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said last year that he hopes to take Arm public again within five years. Earlier, Arm said it plans to transfer two software businesses to its Japanese parent company SoftBank Group, shifting its business strategy to focus on developing its core chip business, and hopes to complete the transfer of the business by September.

After the news came out, some domestic media wrote, "Foreign media said that Apple has had a very close relationship with Arm architecture chips in the past and in the future, so it is possible to consider acquiring ARM." This speculation came from 9to5mac, an American technology media that focuses on reporting news about Apple. In fact, the website only analyzed that "if SoftBank eventually sells Arm or takes the company public, the impact on Apple may be small. However, as early as 2010, there was news that Apple might be interested in acquiring Arm."

In fact, the origin of Apple and Arm began when the latter was founded. In the late 1980s, Apple Computer began to cooperate with Acorn Computer to develop a new version of the RISC instruction set computer, referred to as ARM (Acorn RISC Machine). On November 27, 1990, Acorn was officially reorganized into ARM Computer Company. Apple invested 1.5 million pounds, chip manufacturer VLSI invested 250,000 pounds, and Acorn itself invested 1.5 million pounds of intellectual property rights and 12 engineers.

After the company was founded, the business was very sluggish for a while. ARM made a far-reaching decision: it would not manufacture chips itself, but only license the chip design (IP) to other companies for them to produce. As an intellectual property supplier, ARM itself does not directly engage in chip production. It relies on the transfer of design licenses to cooperative companies to produce chips with different characteristics. Major semiconductor manufacturers in the world purchase ARM microprocessor cores designed by ARM, and add appropriate peripheral circuits according to their different application fields, thus forming their own ARM microprocessor chips to enter the market. Currently, more than 500 semiconductor companies in the world use ARM's authorization, including Apple. This move not only enables ARM technology to obtain more third-party tools, manufacturing, and software support, but also reduces the cost of the entire system, making it easier for products to enter the market and be accepted by consumers, and more competitive, so it quickly occupied the mobile market.

After being acquired by SoftBank in 2016, ARM changed its logo. The new logo changed all the original uppercase English letters "ARM" to lowercase arm, and the text used "Arm".

For Arm, it has successfully opened up a new open business model. The power of this model lies in the fact that it has more than 500 partners worldwide, forming the world's largest technology ecosystem with Arm at its core.

At present, Apple has designed its own A series processors for smartphones and tablets based on Arm's IP, and will further extend it to personal computer processors in the future. The cooperation between the two parties will be further deepened. As for acquiring Arm, at least for Apple now, there is no need for this.