Arm: The hidden tech giant powering the rise of Apple’s iPhone

Arm has achieved indispensable status: 13 million software engineers write code that runs on its chips, and it sits at the heart of the iPhone while remaining largely in the background. Now it is coming into public view with a planned blockbuster public listing in America, reports James Ashton

Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up the new first-generation iPhone on 9 January 2007 in San Francisco. Apple has always been troubled by issues of efficiency and price, and that concern was the basis of its relationship with Arm from the beginning (Getty)

Apple is the most recognisable consumer brand of the age, an electronics juggernaut whose phones and computers redefined their categories and crushed the competition. But world-beating success has been powered in part by a low-profile, surprisingly ubiquitous company that plays a key role in its partner’s success.

Apple sold something like 300 million iPhones and iPads last year. Every one of them is powered by processors built on designs created by Arm, a British chip company. It has licensed its blueprints an astonishing 30 billion times – not only for Apple devices but for laptops, industrial sensors, cars and computer servers.

In recent years, as more and more devices have become smart and require more and more microchips, Arm’s business has flourished. The company’s volumes have doubled in six years.