This would scream antitrust. ARM chips represent something like 90% of all CPUs in existence; billions of cores manufactures every year by different fabs. I'm not sure it would be allowed to go through.
1) ARM doesn't manufacture any chips. They licence their designs to chip makers. That means they are in the chip design market, and there is no way they have a monopoly there, so I find it extremely unlikely that the takeover would be blocked on those grounds.
2) Antitrust problems generally happen when you coerce a company into something using your monopoly power - not when you close down a business (if you believe the bit about them closing ARM down - which I don't). If Apple tried to force ARM licencees to forbid the use of Android (or Flash! :)) on the chips, then maybe there would be a concern (abuse of market power etc).
At at 50M iPhones, thats $5.5M (USD). Even if Apple is paying $2/core in licensing costs (effective, the A4 is the first non-Samsung part used by iPhone OS), thats still $100M, so $8B doesn't pencil out.
I do find it incredibly likely though that Apple would 'buy out' their license(s), and negotiate to have a minimal (maybe even zero) cost license to all future ARM IP.
Or they could just buy a controlling interest (probably wouldn't take 51%) and frighten off everyone who competes with Apple.
Just the slow-down for the rest of the market alone (Atom isn't anywhere close to ARM in terms of functionality/watt), it might be worth it.
Just the slow-down for the rest of the market alone (Atom isn't anywhere close to ARM in terms of functionality/watt), it might be worth it.
ARM licencees already have next-gen (Cortex-A9; ie: Tegra-2 etc) chips coming this year. Any slow down in new designs from ARM won't effect the market for a couple of years as these chips are much faster than the current designs (Cortex-A8; ie: Snapdragon, TI OMAP 3000, Apple A4)
Microsoft is a special case because of their previous antitrust problems. I'm sure it would be investigated, and with a merger of companies that big I suspect lobbying and politics will have as much effect as the law itself.
But at a very superficial level: MS & Intel are in different markets, so there is no obvious objection.
2) Antitrust problems generally happen when you coerce a company into something using your monopoly power - not when you close down a business (if you believe the bit about them closing ARM down - which I don't). If Apple tried to force ARM licencees to forbid the use of Android (or Flash! :)) on the chips, then maybe there would be a concern (abuse of market power etc).