ARM has had a series of issues, but it has continued to do well despite all of them. The thing is, they’ve been doing well because of license holders. That’s th

ARM has had a series of issues, but it has continued to do well despite all of them. The thing is, they’ve been doing well because of license holders. That’s their business. If they keep treating their customers poorly, they will lose. RISC-V, MIPS, and OpenPower are all available. This is especially poignant when we remember that ARM is currently valuable for its performance per watt, and not for its raw performance capability. As x86 gets better at efficiency, and as RISC-V gets better at raw performance, ARM’s entire market fit shrinks. Their best move would be to become more lenient in licensing terms, not less. Edit, I was thinking market share when I said “do well” but ffgjgf1 pointed out that they’ve not been doing well financially. That’s an excellent point and likely explains some of ARM’s behavior. The problem is, alienating your license holders will only make the financials worse…