I assume they're referring to [0] which notes that ARM Holdings was co-founded by Acorn, Apple and VLSI. I don't think the comment in that StrongARM article is

I assume they're referring to [0] which notes that ARM Holdings was co-founded by Acorn, Apple and VLSI. I don't think the comment in that StrongARM article is unreasonable given the state of technology at the time - as a bystander it seems like ARM competing with x86 in performance has only really become possible in the last few years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings#Founding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings#Founding