Arm not to offer: Apple showed no interest in buying British developer
In the case of the probable purchase of Arm assets by NVIDIA, the latter could have taken the initiative, but SoftBank could have had their own plans at their expense, and the point is not only in the possible public offering of shares of the British holding. As it turns out, Arm’s Japanese business owners were trying to match him to Apple.
Bloomberg reported this today, citing traditional knowledgeable sources. SoftBank allegedly approached Apple with an offer to purchase the assets of the British holding Arm, of which the iPhone manufacturer has long been a client. The expansion of cooperation between the companies will be expressed in the fact that the first computers of the Mac family based on ARM-compatible processors will be presented by the end of the year.
Preliminary negotiations between SoftBank and Apple have taken place, but the American side has not expressed interest in the deal. Arm derives its revenue from licensing fees, a business model that is at odds with Apple’s. The magnitude of the antitrust barriers to this deal may have confused the prospect even more, as Apple competes with many of Arm’s customers. The assets of the British holding went to SoftBank in 2016 for $ 32 billion. Apple has so far limited its acquisitions of third-party companies to amounts of several billion dollars – it gave no more than $ 3 billion for the assets of Beats Electronics in 2014.
