SoftBank is buying ARM Holdings

ARM has confirmed that SoftBank is buying the British company for £24.3 billion

Overview

 

Not too long when we were talking about Lenovo making a Windows phone for SoftBank. Now SoftBank is back with a bigger, far bigger news; SoftBank is buying ARM Holdings.

There were already rumors about SoftBank in process of acquiring ARM, which have now been confirmed by the British chipset makers. Brexit is said to be one of the reasons behind this deal since Pound's price has fallen considerably, making the deal easier for SoftBank as it will be easier to finance it for them. Causing a big technological exit from the company as ARM has been ahead of all its rivals when it comes to making chipsets. 

So you just got to know that they design chipsets and make processors? Let us tell you that most of the processors (majorly in smartphones) are based on ARM structure. From legacy ARM v2 to v6, v7, and v8 (most of the new chipsets are based on v8). So it is highly likely that ARM has designed a part of your smartphone in one way or another.

Talking Business

The ARM-SoftBank deal has been okay-ed for about £24.3 billion though the regulatory requirements are yet to be fulfilled. For the acquisition, SoftBank has entered a loan deal for up to 1 trillion Japanese Yen. SoftBanks has also sold its assets in Supercell (company that made Clash of the Clans game) valued at $8.6 billion, and some of its valuable shares in Alibaba, that have a current value of $7.8 billion. The executives of SoftBank are saying that the company will double the workforce of ARM in the nest five years, while unleashing the true potential and growth of ARM and its business. SoftBank is paying 1,700 pence for every ARM Holdings share that clooed at 1,189 pence on July 15th.

Conclusion

 

SoftBank might be something new for the people reading all the tech news, but it is the fourth biggest company in Japan and holds stake in a number fo great companies like Alibaba, Supercell, and Yahoo! Japan. It has 80% of shares in Sprint Corporation which is one of the biggest carriers in the US. The acquisition of ARM is likely to be a great deal as it is going to give SoftBank a technological advantage because of the uniqueness of its business model, and that it can also use more of ARM's technology to bolster its businesses. Not to forget that it was rumored in 2010 that Apple might buy ARM in 2010, something that did not take place.