Arm threatens to revoke Qualcomm license

The dispute between Qualcomm and Arm continues to escalate. The consequences could be dire for Qualcomm if it loses access to Arm’s chip designs.

Arm and Qualcomm have been arguing over licenses since 2022. Burying the hatchet does not seem to be an option for now; quite the contrary. Arm is said to have threatened to revoke Qualcomm’s license, Bloomberg knows. This will not happen overnight. Qualcomm will have a period of sixty days to respond.

The cause of the ongoing dispute is an acquisition of Nuvia by Qualcomm. Nuvia, like Qualcomm, was a buyer of chip design from Arm, and Qualcomm allegedly used its designs in designing the Snapdragon X Elite processor. Arm claims, however, that Qualcomm was not allowed to automatically take over Nuvia’s license after the acquisition without first negotiating a new deal with them.

Hit for Qualcomm, also for Arm?

Losing access to the ARM architecture could be a solid blow to Qualcomm. The chipmaker develops its chips based on designs from Arm. Just this week, Qualcomm unveiled its latest soc for smartphones. Just when Qualcomm is about to rock the PC industry, it would be very bad timing to now have to find an alternative to ARM.

Arm also seems to have little to gain from this itself. CEO Rene Haas has big ambitions in the PC industry and wants to capture at least fifty percent of the Windows sales market. The Copilot Plus PCs are a unique opportunity for Arm to succeed in those plans: previous attempts with Windows on ARM have had little success. With Apple, Arm has another trump card up its sleeve.

Breakup or reconciliation?

Qualcomm is not impressed by Arm’s threat. “This is more of the same from Arm. More baseless threats designed to pressure a longtime partner to interfere with our leading CPUs and raise royalty rates regardless of broad rights under our architecture license,” it said in a response to Financial Times.

The two sides will meet in court in December. Then it should become clear whether a reconciliation is still possible, or whether it will come to a split. A breakup is far from unlikely: Qualcomm’s exclusivity on ARM chips for Windows is about to expire, and there are plenty of parties looking to take over the licenses. Qualcomm, for its part, wants to be less intertwined with Arm and develop chips entirely on its own.