The head of Imagination Technologies has accused ARM Holdings of exploiting its monopoly for chip designs that power the world’s electronic devices.
Imagination moved into ARM’s heartland of producing central processing units (CPUs) for devices such as smartphones when it bought MIPS, of the United States, two years ago.
ARM, which is based in Cambridge, holds a seemingly impregnable position in the mobile market, with its chip designs used in nearly all the world’s smartphones and tablets. Even Intel, the powerhouse of the PC world, has struggled to make a dent in ARM’s position. Imagination estimates that ARM has 80 per cent of the global CPU market, which comprises up to ten billion processors a year, compared with 10 per cent for MIPS.
Sir Hossein