Adquisición de ARM por Softbank por valor de $32.000 millones

ARM, el gigante británico del microprocesador mundialmente conocido, cuyos chips de microprocesador están actualmente presentes en 95% de todos los teléfonos móviles, está llegando al final de su independencia. La fuente citada más abajo ha anunciado esta mañana que ARM pasará a manos de la empresa japonesa Softbank por $32.000 millones de dólares (o 24.000 millones de euros). Softbank es actualmente propietaria de la compañía estadounidense de telefonía móvil Sprint.

The ARM acquisition was something of a surprise for those who stay afloat of the company’s success. ARM not only makes the majority of processors in mobile phones, but, in one of its most important relationships, manufactures chips for the iPhone.  ARM Co-founder Hermann Hauser said that the ARM acquisition brings about a sad day for the UK:

ARM has been the proudest achievement in my life, and this is a very sad day for me…and I think a sad day for technology in Britain…it’s the loss of independence. ARM is really the last British company that has a global reach. We sold 15 billion ARMs all over the world last year…which is more microprocessors in that one year than Intel has sold in its entire history. It is in 95% of mobile phones…it has 400 licensees, which are all the semiconductor companies in the world, bar none of the important ones…and so it gave Britain real strength and it was a British company that determined the next-generation architecture, microprocessor architecture that is going to be used in all the next-generation phones…and now, more importantly, in the next generation of the Internet of Things. And that determination of what comes next for technology will not be decided in Britain anymore, but in Japan.

ARM has had such a presence in mobile tech world, and it isn’t going anywhere — though just where it’s headed is anyone’s guess. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son says that the ARM acquisition is “one of the most important acquisitions we’ve ever made, and I expect ARM to be a key pillar of SoftBank’s growth strategy going forward.

En Wall Street Journal especula con la posibilidad de que SoftBank, propietario de Sprint, disponga de muy poco efectivo para adquirir finalmente T-Mobile, gracias a the company’s new ARM acquisition and mega deal and current $30 billion debt. At the end of the day, though, with Sprint’s owner being in charge of the giant in mobile phone microprocessor architecture, however, the ARM acquisition may just boost Sprint’s bottom line.

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