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ARM CEO dampens talk of Apple acquisition, says 'nobody has to buy the company'
Apple buying ARM may not seem like the likeliest of rumors, but talk of an acquisition has been enough to send ARM shares to their highest point since 2002, which has now prompted ARM CEO Warren East to comment on the matter. While he's obviously pleased to see his company's stock doing so well, East says that "common sense tells us that our standard business model is an excellent way for technology companies to gain access to our technology," adding that, "nobody has to buy the company." Of course, saying that nobody has to buy the company doesn't exactly rule out the possibility of an acquisition -- Apple or otherwise -- and, last we checked, ARM's stock was still edging up higher into positive territory, so dampening talk doesn't seem to be dampening investors' interest just yet.
ARM CEO says netbooks could eventually grab 90 percent of PC market
Think netbooks are on their way out? Not according to ARM CEO Warren East, who said in a recent interview with PC Pro that while netbooks now only represent 10% or so of the PC market, he believes that "over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market." Obviously, he also thinks that would be a huge boon to ARM, and notes that while the main CPU in most netbooks may not be an ARM processor, there are probably at least two or three ARM chips of some sort in each netbook sold. In fairness, we assume that East means netbooks will evolve significantly from their present state over those next several years -- but, still, ninety percent? Update: In the company's earnings call preceding the interview, Warren East also dropped a few tidbits about ARM's roadmap, noting that, "Cortex-A9 will comfortably run at those sorts of frequencies (1GHz) and, indeed, with physical IP optimization, we demonstrated can scale up to 2 gigahertz today." East further added that the "other Cortex-A9 has a lot more headroom to go, it's a multi-processor design, so you can have quad-core -- or up to quad-core implementation."
ARM CEO hints at possible Windows 7 support for ARM processors
This could just be a case of a CEO letting his wishful thinking out into the open, but ARM's Warren East was apparently all too happy to talk about the possibility of Windows 7 supporting ARM processors during a recent analysts conference call, even if he wasn't quite ready to offer much of anything in the way of specifics. He did lay out the scenario pretty well, however, leading off by saying that "Microsoft will continue to play an important part in this [netbook] space," and that "if there was Windows support for the ARM processor today clearly it would be a very different marketplace." To which he apparently quickly added, "perhaps there will be support in future but that's really for Microsoft to comment on and not for us to comment on, I'm afraid." Of course, all of this is made all the more interesting given ARM's increasing interest in the netbook space, which is certainly a tough nut to crack without Microsoft's assistance -- Android possibilities notwithstanding.[Via Electronista]
