ARM Takes Its Chip Business Beyond Phones - WSJ

ARM Takes Its Chip Business Beyond Phones - WSJ:
ARM Holdings, $ARMH, is one of the great intellectual property engines of our time. They make the chips used in cell phones and other computing devices. Or, stated more accurately, they invent the chips, and then license out the manufacturing, sales and distribution of them.
One thing that has made them such a dominant force is low power use technologies, exactly the kinds of things you need for mobile technologies.
When you look at the financials of ARMH, don't be deceived and compare them directly with a company like Intel or AMD. ARM has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 60 to 70; Intel has a PE of only 14 to 16. Intel has the $ billion factories. ARM has only the development labs for inventing stuff.
And, speaking of stuff; ARM is now setting their sights on the-internet-of-stuff. Billions of new items will be connected to the internet each year. Appliances, pet monitors, and more...
Let's see how that evolves.
In the mean time, keep your eyes on this company that utilizes IP better than pretty much any other. It gets is reviews in the form of royalty payments wired to the bank. Nearly pure profit.
It's a beautiful thing.
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AP: Yahoo, Facebook strike patent truce, ad alliance

The Associated Press: Yahoo, Facebook strike patent truce, ad alliance:
"Yahoo's legal assault had exposed Facebook's vulnerability to patent claims as it prepared to complete the biggest initial public offering of stock by an Internet company."

So Facebook had to go out and build its own war chest of patents: 750 here, 650 there. Now the law suit goes away and everybody's making nice.

"Facebook insulated itself by buying 750 patents from IBM Corp. for an undisclosed amount and spending $550 million to acquire another 650 patents that one of its biggest shareholders, Microsoft Corp., had purchased from AOL Inc. Armed with its own arsenal of intellectual property, Facebook signaled that it wasn't backing down and filed its own patent infringement lawsuit against Yahoo in April." That's 1400 patents from IBM and AOL (via MSFT).

For those people who used to think that anyone could duplicate Facebook; that's going to now require some rethinking. Plus, if everyone you know (and a whole lot of "friends" who you don't really know) are on Facebook, there's really no easy way to switch. Unless, of course, you have become tired of your old friends and you wanna start over by looking for new ones:-)

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