In yet another cruel affirmation of the West's general preference for the services economy over building stuff, ARM boasts a market cap of around $11 billion or nearly twice that of its second place rival in the ranking of European semiconductor companies.
Obviously, ARM is an important entity in the electronics world with its design IP behind the preponderance of the processors powering great swaths of mobile devices - smart phones and tablets - from top and lower tier hardware manufacturers alike.
But ARM does not build any thing as such. This is a point lost on many journalists and even "analysts" covering the electronics world. ARM designs the circuits at a various levels of abstraction that can be incorporated by design teams at chip companies (fabless and integrated alike) into real working pieces of silicon hardware.
So it is a bit of sad commentary that ARM is so much more valued by investors. You might say it is even shocking if you compare the sales of these European semicos. ARM revenues are around $0.5B while the third place company - ST Microelectronics - piles up sales of around $8B. That's revenues of 16 times for a hardware product company valued at much less than half of the services company.
For Manners full article, please follow the link:
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/222399