(Reuters) – Arm Inc, the British firm whose chip technologies power most smart phones, said on Wednesday it was easing fees for startup companies and providing free offerings to an incubator for early-stage chip firms.
Arm, owned by Japan’s Softbank Group Corp, licenses its intellectual property to companies like Qualcomm Inc, Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which in turn use the technology in their respective chips for smartphones and other devices. Arm charges a range of licensing fees to access its technology, including some that must be paid for potentially several years of design and development time before a company ever sees its first physical chip.
Those costs are more difficult for small companies to absorb, so last year Arm opened up about three-quarters of its portfolio of chip technology for a new “flexible access” program that delayed many of those fees until after its customers had a chip in hand that they could begin to sell. Arm also faces…
Source Reuters Tech News
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