PC Gamer is supported by its audience. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more
By published
Arm is looking ripe for a takeover.
Arm is looking like a ripe takeover target. South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix is weighing up whether to form a consortium of investors to acquire the British company.
According to Yonhap news agency (via Yahoo Finance) Park Jung-ho, vice chairman and CEO of SK Hynix is quoted as saying: «We are reviewing possibly forming a consortium, together with strategic partners, to jointly acquire it,» He followed up by saying «I don’t believe Arm is a company that could be bought by one company.” The comments came following the company’s annual general shareholders meeting.
The news follows Nvidia’s earlier failed bid to buy Arm after the US based company came up against major regulatory hurdles. The US Federal Trade Commission, UK Competition and Markets Authority, the European Commission and Chinese antitrust authority all raised concerns over the takeover. That led to Nvidia writing off $1.36 billion as a result of the failed bid.
As a South Korean company, it remains to be seen how global regulators will view a potential bid. If a deal does end up happening, it won’t be finalized any time soon.
Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first
Current Arm owner SoftBank is preparing to list Arm on the Nasdaq exchange. Arm has become one of the leaders in the world semiconductor ecosystem. Chips based on Arm intellectual property are sold by many of the world’s largest tech companies. Not just the Apple’s and Samsung’s of the world, but across industries as diverse as cars to supercomputers to automation.
Some analysts and Arm licensees themselves see Arm based architectures dethroning x86 as the dominant PC architecture. Qualcomm certainly seems to think so. Qualcomm, known for its Snapdragon SoC’s, claims that the company is «very well positioned to be the preferred platform for PCs, in the inevitable transition to Arm.»
Chris’ gaming experiences go back to the mid-nineties when he conned his parents into buying an ‘educational PC’ that was conveniently overpowered to play Doom and Tie Fighter. He developed a love of extreme overclocking that destroyed his savings despite the cheaper hardware on offer via his job at a PC store. To afford more LN2 he began moonlighting as a reviewer for VR-Zone before jumping the fence to work for MSI Australia. Since then, he’s gone back to journalism, enthusiastically reviewing the latest and greatest components for PC & Tech Authority, PC Powerplay and currently Australian Personal Computer magazine and PC Gamer. Chris still puts far too many hours into Borderlands 3, always striving to become a more efficient killer.
Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.
Thank you for signing up to PC Gamer. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.
© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
