IoT And Smartphone Deals See ARM In The Money

ARM has announced better than expected financial results as the company enjoyed a record number of new licensing deals.

The British chipmaker recorded a 22 percent year on year rise in sterling revenues for the second quarter of 2015.

This was despite warning earlier in the year that the outlook for the mobile processor market as a whole was set to decrease.

Spread

Overall, 3.4 billion ARM-based chips were shipped in the quarter, a 26 percent year-on-year increase, which led to a 31 percent rise in processor royalty revenues, and licensing revenue also increased three percent.

In what proved to be a very successful quarter, ARM announced it has secured a record 54 processor licences for a broad range of applications, including the likes of biometric sensors for mobile payments to automotive engine control.

The company also announced it has secured a new subscription licence with a major Chinese OEM, and now has over 400 licensing deals across the world.

“A lot of people focus on our application processors and our smartphones, but we have large investments in other areas,” Pete Hutton, EVP and president of product groups at ARM, told TechWeekEurope this morning. “It shows the range of technologies we go across and the wide range of customers we go into.”

Investments

Several of ARM’s largest customers, including the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung, have experienced struggles recently, but Hutton says that the sheer scale of ARM’s work means it can remain strong.

“We go across everybody…we’re supplying technology to everybody, so we’re protected from that to an extent,” he says.

Looking forward, ARM is positive about further growth, noting that it has “a robust pipeline of opportunities for licensing”, which as mentioned above includes a significant focus on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

“IoT has been part of our strategy for a while,” Hutton says. “We’ve been working on this for a fairly long time, we have a lot of base technology in terms of all the processors out there.

“IoT is a specific focus for us and a big investment area…and we’re having a lot of success! A lot of the IoT devices out there are based on ARM.

“We have large numbers of new technologies coming out and we have large numbers of customers both new and existing, so we’re pretty happy.”

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