Global hunger for smartphones sees ARM profits boom
Chip designer ARM Holdings has announced a rise in normalised profit before tax of 19 per cent to £95.5m for the fourth quarter ended 31 December. Normalised Profit before tax for the full year rose to £364m – a 32 per cent increase on the previous year.
ARM cited 26 processor licences signed for a broad range of applications and significant growth in shipments of chips based on ARM processor technology as key drivers of growth.
Simon Segars, chief executive officer, said:
ARM's strategy is for our technology to continue to gain share in long-term growth markets, such as smartphones, tablets, enterprise equipment and embedded computing, and to increase the royalty percentage ARM receives from each device.
ARM saw good progress in Q4 as our latest technology was chosen by major companies in all our target markets, with further licenses signed for our latest ARMv8-A processors, Mali graphics processors and physical IP technology. These design wins will help to drive ARM's future royalty revenues.
The company emphasised its success in shipping 2.9bn ARM-based chips – a record number, despite slower growth of chips for premium smartphones.
ARM expects full year 2014 processor royalty revenues to grow at a similar rate to the last last three years. The group expects revenues for the full year 2014 to be in line with market expectations.