I'm just completely offended by this rube, who is supposedly a respected tech journo for Slate, not understanding the difference between a technology company and a technology manufacturer. He's comparing apples to oranges (pun intended) by saying ARM is tiny and unheard of because they have 1% of the revenue of Apple. C'mon dude, Apple is a manufacturer and retailer that has stores nationwide that sells tangible goods. ARM is a B2B company. And you throw in Samsung and Microsoft for enhanced context. Great. You're basically comparing KFC, McDonalds, and Burger King to the chicken farmers, cattle ranchers, and lettuce growers that make those delicious sammiches possible. C'MONNNNN...
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I think the point was in the title of the post - anyone involved in electronics design, electronics reviewing, gadgeteering, or just having been awake in the last decade has heard of ARM.
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haha, I like the way you put that, Dominic. Have you seen the show Portlandia? They had a really funny one where a "real" Nerd did a public service announcement to ask non-real nerds to stop calling themselves nerds as if it's cool to be a nerd now. Don't know why you just reminded me of it, but super funny if you look it up. Great show overall too, especially for us nerds!
Agreed. ARM is behind one of the most popular bits of plastic on the planet. What sort of self respecting Nerd would say otherwise! They ship millions of RISC processors - not millions of phones - pretty big difference in totals on your p and L statement. According to ARM Holdings, in 2010 alone, producers of chips based on ARM architectures reported shipments of 6.1 billion ARM-based processors representing 95% of smartphones, 35% of digital televisions and set top boxes and 10% of mobile computers. I'd like to be that tiny!