I find that this provides insight about how certain people and companies think.
ARM traces its history back to the mid-1980s, when a group of software engineers decided to design their own microprocessor for the Acorn BBC Micro, a device that introduced a generation of British school children to computing.
Muller said the rise of rival computers based on Intel chips dealt Acorn a fatal blow, but despite the failure Apple had seen something it liked in the technology, which it wanted to use in its Newton handheld device.
With Apple’s backing, ARM was spun out of Acorn in 1990.
The Newton failed, but ARM persevered with its designs and was chosen by another company set to become a global leader — Nokia — for a new mobile phone in the mid-1990s.
“Because Nokia was then becoming the No. 1 mobile phone company, other people knew they’d selected ARM to use in mobile phones, and that drove a lot of adoption from other players,” Muller said.
Nokia chose ARM’s processor designs because they required less power than those from rivals, making them ideal for a mobile device powered by a battery.
An early decision to let its customers innovate using ARM’s core technology was key to its success, Muller said, giving partners such as Apple, Samsung or Qualcomm the freedom to develop their own chips while using ARM’s common architecture that had become the industry standard.
The company and analysts had said that partnership model had made ARM less vulnerable to a takeover because an acquisition by the likes of Apple or Intel could put off its other partners.
SoftBank, a telecommunications and internet company with no presence in semiconductors, largely sidesteps that problem.
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