New York Times:

Started in 1990 as a spinoff from Acorn Computers, a now-defunct British computer maker, ARM has gone from a small start-up of less than 20 people to a global leader whose technology is used in more than 90 percent of smartphones produced by Apple and Samsung, among others.

And:

Unlike Intel, ARM forgoes the high margins — and equally high production costs — of directly manufacturing microchips. Instead, its engineers design chips, which are then licensed to larger technology companies like Qualcomm that pay ARM fees and royalties for manufacturing the chips.

This is not yet a done deal. Whoever ultimately owns ARM will have control over the chip designs in most of the mobile devices in the world, no small thing. I don’t expect Apple to sit on the sidelines while this plays out.