SoftBank is buying ARM for $32B | Hacker News Reader

SoftBank is buying ARM for $32B

recode.net

91 pointsamaks11 comments

Purely as a member of the UK tech community, this comes as worrying news. We don't have that many world class technology players, at this sorry of level.

As someone who likes ARM though, I suspect this is a fairly good thing. SoftBank have bought other entities of late in similar spaces that are doing well.

Examples that I'm thinking of would be BetFair, Sprint Corporation, Upstream and Supercell. They've a history of good investment and ownership, and a fairly hands-off approach to managing the companies they own/have heavy investment in.

I'm not thrilled at ARM being owned now, but it's a good price and SoftBank are about as good as they'd be likely to get.

It's an initial defeat for the new prime minister, who previously complained about the vast number of major UK companies and utilities being taken over by foreigners. As we know from experience, this usually leads to profits and UK jobs moving overseas as well....

If May is unable or unwilling to stop the ARM takeover, which seems to be the case, then many more will follow. Especially as the declining value of the post-Brexit pound (down 30% against the Yen in the past year), makes UK companies cheaper.

There's still time for other bidders. I'm sure that Apple has at least considered it in the past, and may be reconsidering it now.

Apple was instrumental in splitting ARM from Acorn and, I seem to recall, owned 40% of it at launch. (It used an ARM chip in the Newton.) However, Apple owning ARM might well encourage other companies to use Intel or other chips....

Didn't Intel cancel chips for mobile phones this spring after the rather spectacular failure of Atom gaining any measurable marketshare? ARM has an architecture monopoly.

Yes, it cancelled the Broxton and SoFIA SoCs, which were targeted at mobile phones, presumably because these are low-margin businesses where Intel wasn't making any money. However, it's still in the Atom business, so there's nothing to stop it from doing mobile SoCs in the future.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10288/intel-broxton-sofia-smar...

I wonder how much the sorry state of sterling helped this?

It was 7% more expensive for them:

https://twitter.com/jamestitcomb/status/754966707769315333

OK, looks like since the Pound tanked against the Yen last month ARM's share price has risen to more than counteract that. Thanks.

what does softbank bring to the table? how is arm helped by becoming part of softbank?

Your asking the wrong question. The right question is how does ARM help SoftBank?

The answer: SoftBank is making a major play into the growing IoT market and betting that ARM will greatly increase their revenues when chip volumes go up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com