Apple almost certainly has some kind of long term or perpetual contract that assures access to ARM instruction set and perhaps some other IP, given they co-crea

Apple almost certainly has some kind of long term or perpetual contract that assures access to ARM instruction set and perhaps some other IP, given they co-created ARM Holdings back in 1990. While A-series chips use ARM instruction set, they've moved on from using actual ARM cores to their own custom cores with the A6 (2012), so they're probably not that exposed on IP if ARM changes hands. Additionally, since Apple controls the whole stack including dev tools on their platforms, they have a lot more freedom to change underlying chip architecture changes than many others, who must rely entirely on third party software ecosystems to move. Apple probably wouldn't get their money's worth at current price, given they wouldn't want to take on ARM's tech licensing business, since it's well out of scope for Apple's core business. A consortium would only be another messy strategic entanglement to deal with.