ARM to cancel Qualcomm's chip design license

With a looming legal battle between the two companies due to play out in December, ARM Holdings plc has fired the first shots at Qualcomm by cancelling their architectural design license. 

BNN Bloomberg is reporting that ARM has sent Qualcomm a 60-day notice of the cancellation. If the cancellation takes effect, Qualcomm would have to stop selling products based on ARM technology, potentially disrupting a lucrative revenue stream that spans multiple products used in Android phones and other mobile devices. These include the Nuvia based Snapdragon X Elite and 8 Elite.    

The battle began in 2022 when ARM sued Qualcomm and its subsidiary Nuvia for developing custom Phoenix cores without ARM's consent. 

Before being purchased by Qualcomm, ARM let Nuvia modify its designs to create custom cores. That agreement was voided when Nuvia was bought out, and ARM terminated all of Nuvia's licenses in March 2022. 

ARM argued that Qualcomm, "attempted to transfer Nuvia's licenses without ARM's consent." Qualcomm said that ARM has no right, "contractual or otherwise, to attempt to interfere with Qualcomm’s or Nuvia’s innovations." 

In a statement shared with Sam Mobile, a Qualcomm spokesperson said, "This is more of the same from ARM – more unfounded threats designed to strongarm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license."