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An ARM might be overkill (and a bit expensive) for something that can be done with an 8051. A better choice might be something like an Atmel AVR or Microchip PIC(16 or 32 probably). Those are dirt-cheap, and specifically designed for microcontroller applications with features like on-board ADCs, comparators, timers, GPIOs, etc.

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I hear this argument a lot in the EE community. Yet, the cheapest 8051 part in single quantities on DigiKey: $0.43. Cheapest ARM Cortex-M0 part on DigiKey: $0.47. I'll take the ease of development and features on ARM for $0.05. You can develop without proprietary development environments. I do my development with a basic gcc+make setup.

Of course you can pick up old parts which fell off a truck for cheaper but I'd rather not do that when I depend on these parts for many years to come.

The cheaper 8051s aren't on digikey (they are usually integrated into something like the custom MCU used for a pregnancy test or tooth brush), and $0.05 is very worth it if you are making 1000000.

8051 is a complete overkill for a pregnancy test or a toothbrush.

That's why those applications use less known 4-bit processors.

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