Rumour: Apple to buy ARM
London’s financial district is “aflame” with rumors of a possible takeover of> ARM > by a company that only yesterday> announced > that it was sitting on a cash reserve of $41.7bn: Apple.
Interesting. Thinking back, Apple and ARM have been fairly friendly for quite a while now - they worked together very closely on designing custom chips for the Newton platform.
Microsoft has also been sniffing around ARM lately too, there’s talk of Bing building a “green” data centre using low-power ARM chips. Whether they’ll buy the chips retail, or just Borg the company, no one is saying. In related news, Google just bought Agnilux, a chipmaker started by the people who left PA Semi when Apple bought it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/google_buys_agnilux/
Seems having a chip company is all the rage these days. I wonder if that part of the industry is heading back towards fragmentation again?