They are, but ARM probably wouldn't exist in its current form without Apple. ARM was developed in the 1980s by Acorn -- a small, mostly struggling British comp

They are, but ARM probably wouldn't exist in its current form without Apple. ARM was developed in the 1980s by Acorn -- a small, mostly struggling British company -- as the Acorn Risc Machine. They wanted a simple 6502 replacement without going to the Motorola 68000, as Apple, Atari, Amiga (Commodore), Sinclair and others did. Apple wanted to use the ARM in the Newton handheld, but wasn't going to bet on a chip owned by a small British company. So, Apple persuaded Acorn to spin off the ARM operation into a separate company, Advanced Risc Machines. This was jointly owned by Acorn, Apple and VTI (40/40/20). The rest is history. VTI got in because Acorn relied on its software tools to design the ARM chip and get it manufactured. Acorn had never designed a chip before and, in the beginning, didn't really know what it was doing.