Arm Cancelling Qualcomm’s Chip License Could Throw Mobile Market Into Upheaval

Arm Ltd has reportedly cancelled a license granted to Qualcomm to design chips based on its technology, possibly throwing the mobile market into a state of disarray. The report states Arm has given Qualcomm a 60-day notice of the cancellation, as required by law.

About three years ago, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon suggested a consortium of buyers as an alternative to NVIDIA’s lone attempt at buying out Arm, to subdue the heavy regulatory scrutiny of the deal. While NVIDIA's proposal eventually fell through, Arm has pressed on unabated and has had continued success, due in no small part to Qualcomm pushing into additional markets. Just this year, Arm CEO Rene Haas boldly predicted Arm chips will overtake 50% of Windows PCs by 2029. Arm’s announcement of the cancellation of Qualcomm’s chip license, however, could put a damper on those expectations.

The bombshell report from Bloomberg comes just as Qualcomm is holding its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. During the first two days of the event, the company has made numerous announcements, including the unveiling of its new Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Ride Elite, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform. In terms of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm boldly says it torches Intel's Lunar Lake laptop chips in some situations and propels the Android ecosystem back into a performance leadership position.

While Arm has chosen to remain silent about the cancellation thus far, over and above the initial announcement, Qualcomm has issued its own statement. The chip maker remarked, “This is more of the same from ARM -- more unfounded threats designed to strong-arm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license. With a trial fast approaching in December, Arm’s desperate ploy appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless. We are confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed. Arm’s anticompetitive conduct will not be tolerated.”

Arm’s lawsuit is in regard to Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia, and Arm claiming Qualcomm is wrongfully using a license obtained by Nuvia before the buyout to make chips targeted at laptops and PCs. Some have pointed out that the lawsuit should not affect Qualcomm’s custom designed chips for phones, but rather is focused on its Snapdragon X platform for PCs and laptops. The newly announced Snapdragon 8 Elite, however, is based on the same CPU architecture as the X Elite, so there's some ambiguity there.

It is far too early to know what level of impact, if any, Arm cancelling Qualcomm's chip license will have on the company's recent announcements at Snapdragon Summit, and other products. Stay tuned to HotHardware for any future news related to the skirmish between Arm and Qualcomm.