Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

arm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 279 posts

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#181

Post by fidotron »

ethbr1 wrote: post #158
fidotron wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. You can see in some of the comments here the American mentality simply could not have made ARM successful because they would have been too busy competing with their own customers. For ARM to take off and be trusted they had to knowingly leave valuable profit margins around for their customers to be able to take advantage of. The defining question is if the world is better off by having people play that game o…

Microsoft minted many fortunes by leaving valuable profit margins around for third party developers. It's a longer game, so hopefully ARM employees still own some equity.

Where are these third party developers that made decent money and Microsoft didn’t subsequently try to eat their piece of the pie?

It is a repeated pattern and people are not stupid. (See also the Sherlock phenomenon with Apple). Valve, for example, have to invest in proton as the ultimate back up plan. For me personally that has proven quite helpful, but your initial business has to be wildly successful for you to be able to play defensive moves like that.

This leads to a situation where mid sized companies are few in number and unstable.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#182

Post by orlp »

senttoschool wrote: post #87
sschueller wrote: post #61

How long until Apple does a hostile takeover? /s I assume regulators would block a hostile takeover like they would a regular buyout if there are concerns regarding market power?

Why would Apple ever want to own ARM? Their internal CPU design team is years ahead of the ARM team. Apple has an architectural license and doesn't care about ARM core designs. Quite honestly, ARM falling on its face hard is actually a benefit to Apple. That would mean that Apple Silicon and iPhone SoCs have less competition. Imagine if Qualcomm chips based on ARM designs are 5 years behind instead of the 2-3 years n…

> Why would Apple ever want to own ARM?

You answered your own question:

> Quite honestly, ARM falling on its face hard is actually a benefit to Apple. That would mean that Apple Silicon and iPhone SoCs have less competition.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#183

Post by rjmunro »

pjc50 wrote: post #57
sapiogram wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not hostile, to the engineering profession Any chance you could elaborate on this? Arm exists and is British, after all.

Goes all the way back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures and beyond. The UK has a great engineering tradition, especially from the Victorian and Empire eras, all the way up to WW2, but it seems that after that there was a dramatic and incredibly short sighted turn to economisation and avoiding investment. The absolute poster child for this was the UK space programme, which was cancelled just before the…

> Concorde somehow escaped cancellation

Was that because it was owned by a government treaty with France? Neither country could cancel without the other.

The final result was way overbudget and not a market fit, but a bunch of skills and technology went on to Airbus.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#184

Post by twen_ty »

Thev00d00 wrote: post #5

Bit of a downer for the UK to see them list in the US, I do understand they just want access to the most capital, but I find a shame LSE is not competitive for this kind of thing.

Why would anyone want to do a major IPO like this in Brexit Britain?

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#185

Post by pjc50 »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #168
pjc50 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask people in the street to name a famous living British technologist, they might come up with Tim Berners-Lee or James Dyson, but they are never going to name Sophie Wilson. (I wonder what answers you would get?)

It is upsetting to me but you are right, they'd know Dyson. (I wish they would instead know the name Chris Duncan, the inventor of the Henry vacuum cleaner and while still a Brexiteer, a man who hasn't subsequently kicked dirt in the eye of the UK). They wouldn't remember Tim Berners-Lee's actual name but they would be able to say, the web guy. (Which is probably better for him when he goes shopping).

TBL was in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony!

But yes, few people who actually _build_ things, get to be famous public figures. Possibly due to being too busy to engage with the media nonsense or even worse social media nonsense.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#186

Post by pjc50 »

Fluorescence wrote: post #128
scrlk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I need the correct "old boys" school tie and a pair of red trousers to get funded by UK investors? :^)

Nah, the OP is talking bollocks. The angels I know are all middle/working-class entrepreneurs. There is no upper-class conspiracy holding people back, there just isn't much money. Non-Brits don't really understand that class is not money. Red trousers are closer to farmers than businessmen. If you are British and want to be a tech investor, you go to the US too.

> There is no upper-class conspiracy holding people back, there just isn't much money.

I think the argument is that there _is_ plenty of money, it's just parked safely and quietly in property rather than investing in production or R&D. And not a "conspiracy" as much as the blank look the property investor class give you when you can't promise risk free leveraged 7% forever.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#188

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

ur-whale wrote: post #131
msy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has a long intellectual tradition which creates a steady stream of creative and capable engineers. Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk. As a consequence there is low appetite for risky new ventures and those that want to undertake them mostly migrate elsewhere. What's left is a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dianosaurs, a de…

> Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk You just described the capital markets in the entire western Europe, not just the brits.

But also the USA, probably.

If you look past the tech bubble economies where the "new money" owners are, and into the world of physical assets, what you find is a constellation of families concentrating wealth, swirling around the central families of the 21st Century -- the Waltons, the Mars family, the Kochs, and so on down -- a power series of family wealth that has ordinary investors in the long tail.

The USA is easily distracted by the vibrancy of the market-driven tech economy, and hoodwinked into ignoring the astonishing growth of private equity controlled by inherited wealth.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#189

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

pjc50 wrote: post #185
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is upsetting to me but you are right, they'd know Dyson. (I wish they would instead know the name Chris Duncan, the inventor of the Henry vacuum cleaner and while still a Brexiteer, a man who hasn't subsequently kicked dirt in the eye of the UK). They wouldn't remember Tim Berners-Lee's actual name but they would be able to say, the web guy. (Which is probably better for him when he goes shopping).

TBL was in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony! But yes, few people who actually _build_ things, get to be famous public figures. Possibly due to being too busy to engage with the media nonsense or even worse social media nonsense.

He was indeed :-) But I suspect more people could recognise his charming unassuming face than remember his actual name.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#190

Post by Mistletoe »

klelatti wrote: post #138

I think in many ways Arm is (or should be) a sort of large 'Mittelstand' [1] business. Long term focus, independence, customer focus etc are key to the success of this type of business. Trouble is, its success and its sector has given it a profile that attracts attention from the likes of Softbank who have other ideas. A company doesn't need to have a Nvidia like P/E ratio to be successful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.o…

Do people use P/E as a metric for company success? I find the Nvidia one of 223 or so just a gross perversion, no real success there. It’s more about how irrational the average investor is now and how top heavy the SP500 is.
Post reply on HN