Re: Apple wouldn't do similar?
Apple gave ARM Money + A dream lead customer (i.e. lots of free marketing)
ARM was created as a joint venture in 1990 between UK computer company Acorn, Apple, and VLSI technology who at that time manufactured the ARM processor chips for Acorn, and got a small percentage holding (5% if I remember correctly) for providing VLSI design tools to ARM for a number of years.
Apple wanted to use ARM processors in the Apple Newton, but didn't want to buy them from a competitor in the desktop computer market, which Acorn was. Acorn wanted to spin out ARM because they couldn't afford to keep developing successive generations of CPUs and thought that spinning it out would also lead to value creation (they were right about that, SoftBank bought ARM for 32 Billon dollars).
So Acorn transferred the ARM technology + 12 people; Apple put in some money (a million or so pounds or dollars); VLSI put in the design tools. ARM was born, and the "A" in the ARM Acronym was changed from "Acorn" to "Advanced" and "Advanced RISC Machines Ltd" was born.
Having Apple as a customer launching a glamorous new category of hand held computer called the Newton with an ARM610 in it was pretty free good marketing too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
