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ARM will stay private for now, Thank you

ARM to stay private and no intentions regarding sealing acquisition deals

Some of the companies are reshaping their business and selling acquisition deals like HP going to spin off or sell its whole PC business. Though it may be a rumour but it is heard that Samsung has chances of buying the particular division. Some were speculating about ARM’s acquisition by some IT entity, perhaps Apple.

To put all these rumours apart CEO Warren East addressed the issue in an interview with The Telegraph as “If you look at the end customer, like an Apple, or any company within the ecosystem at any particular point in the value chain, if one of those companies were to acquire ARM – well, why? They either want access to the technology, which they have already, or they want to prevent competitors from gaining access to it”. He added “In reality it doesn't work very well... If you want to prevent your competitors getting the technology, it's not a very good way of doing it. There are 800 licensees out there. Most are perpetual licenses. They last forever. The worst that company could do is seriously inconvenience their competitors.”

From what he said we can say even if there’s interest in buying ARM’s assets, the company does not see them having a great motivation to leap into such venture. Moreover the outfit itself does not actually intend to let itself be integrated into another company.

Warren East also added “If you get a buyer who is a significant part of the ecosystem, in which they already play a part, it is likely that they would be excluding part of the market and therefore diminishing part of the value of ARM,” and “ARM has been built around the principle of being agnostic at every point in the value chain. Because of that approach, it means that acquisitions are very difficult. It's not impossible, but ARM is a very valuable business as it is and a significant part of that value lies in its agnostic approach."

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Pallab Jyotee Hazarika, 2011-08-26 (Update: 2012-05-26)