"Arm was faced with the choice of upping its licensing costs to make up for the low royalties, or increase its royalties."
Or take a third option - tell SoftBank to piss off. There's a reason that the costs are what they are. Don't they already think ARM has already done a lot of work in calculating the most advantageous pricing?
Sure, they could charge more. They could triple the charges overnight. And the result? A massive loss of goodwill as those using ARM technology jump ship to something else. End result? Lower income, fewer cores in use and in production, and probably kick-starting a viable competitor in the market. It worries me that something calling itself a bank can't figure that much out...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
