ARM – Record Results? We’re Only Just Getting Started

Chipmaker ARM has told TechWeekEurope that it will rest on its laurels following a record year for the company.

Following the announcement of its best quarterly financial results, the Cambridge-based firm, which licenses its technology to the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung, says it is increasingly confident about the coming months and years ahead.

“We have seen a continually strong mobile market,” Noel Hurley, ARM’s general manager of CPU, told TechWeekEurope.

Describing the company’s performance smartphone market in 2014 as ‘reasonably strong’, Hurley said ARM is maintaining a strong outlook for the year ahead as it gets increasingly involved with powering the Internet of Things (IoT).

“Our results were not driven just by mobile,” he said. “We’re looking to add intelligence into everything.”

Going mobile

ARM revealed that it sold 12 billion units last year, and also reported today that its Mali GPU has become the world’s leader in the Android market, with 550 million units shipped during 2014.

The company’s outlook has been boosted by the unveiling of the Cortex A72, which it says is its most powerful mobile processor ever, which Hurley says will give consumers three times more performance within the same power and battery life than the devices currently on the market.

Due to appear in mobile and tablet devices from 2016, the 64-bit A72 will give smartphone users console-quality graphics and gaming experiences, as well as enabling 4K video content on thinner and lighter smartphones than ever before.

“Mobile devices are increasingly becoming people’s primary device – they’re freeing us from our desks,” says Hurley.

“And the manufacturing technology is constantly evolving,” he added, “We’re not running out of ideas of where to go next.”

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