Industry Expert Blogs

As a member of the UK semiconductor community and as an ARM competitor Monday’s announcement of Softbank acquiring ARM came out of the blue. So what does this mean for UK tech and for the electronics industry more generally?

Firstly, I must say that ARM has done very well emerging from the ashes of the 1980s UK semiconductor industry. In the 1980s home grown giants such as GEC, Plessey and STC were in decline and very dependent on UK Government contracts; which were rapidly disappearing under the Thatcher regime. Start-ups were few and far between and, when I was at GEC Hirst Research, I was interested to hear that my colleagues Harry Oldham and Peter Harrod were recruited to join Acorn and work on processor chips. When ARM was spun out of Acorn they did very well to get investment from Apple associated with the Newton product and even better to comprehensively win business in the mobile phone space.