Japan's SoftBank to buy chipmaker ARM for $32 billion

Japan based internet and telecommunications company SoftBank has agreed to buy popular UK-based chip design maker ARM Holdings for about 24 billion pounds ($32 billion), a deal which is touted to be the largest ever acquisition of a European tech firm.

ARM dominates the smartphone market, with its lineup of chips that are used in 95 percent of the smartphones to date. Some of the notable clients include Samsung, Apple and Huawei. The number of devices running ARM-designed hardware crossed 60 billion last year. 

The firm, unlike Intel, does not manufacture its own processors, instead licenses the IP for its designs to manufacturers such as Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, NVIDIA, Apple and others, so that they design their own products. For instance Samsung licenses Cortex processor or chip architecture from ARM to design their own CPU like the Exynos M1 CPU on Exynos 8890 SoC, which is utilized by Galaxy S7.

SoftBank is a major investor in the tech segment, and some of the notable companies that it acquired stake include U.S carrier Sprint, China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, India's e-commerce space Snapdeal and rid aggregator Ola Cabs among others.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said that ARM would function as an independent business, with an intention to double the number of employees employed by ARM in the UK over the next five years. He added "ARM will be an excellent strategic fit with the Softbank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the internet of things"

Via