Arm Could Raise Chip Tech Licensing Price By Up To 300%

Arm has been one of the most important companies in the development of the smartphone industry. Its technology is present in the chips of the vast majority of mobile devices and low-power electronics worldwide. However, it seems that its financial growth has not kept pace. Now, Arm reportedly wants to change that with an increase in the prices of its chip technology and the development of its own hardware.

Arm reportedly to increase prices for its chip technology by up to 300%

If you are not aware, Arm provides the Cortex CPU core designs present in virtually all smartphone and tablet chips. It also develops the Mali and Immortalis GPUs that are usually combined with its CPU cores. Major chip developers, such as Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, turn to Arm to license their designs. Under the contract, Arm takes a small royalty for each chip unit produced with its technology.

Now, Reuters reports that Arm is considering up to a 300% increase in prices for its developments. More specifically, this could apply to ready-made parts of chip designs. In other words, technologies like stock Cortex-A7xx cores and Immortalis GPUs could soon become much more expensive.

If implemented, the change could not affect big names in the chip development industry like Qualcomm and Apple. These companies can develop their own custom CPU cores based on Arm technologies. Apple has been doing this for a long time, while Qualcomm recently re-implemented custom cores—Oryon—in phone and laptop chips. Samsung also designs its own CPU cores for Exynos chips. Not so for MediaTek, though, since even its most expensive SoCs use stock Cortex CPU cores.

Designing its own chipsets is also on the table

In addition to the potential price increase in its licenses, Arm is also reportedly planning to develop its own chipsets. That is, the company could not limit itself to designing the CPU architecture to sell to external SoC manufacturers but could become direct competition for some of its main clients in the industry.

Arm is not happy with the pace of its business growth. Ironically, brands that use its technology as the basis of their products achieve much higher revenues. In 2024, Arm achieved revenues of 3.23 billion dollars, while Apple’s for the same year were up to 90 times greater.

The report refers to the company’s new business model as the “Picasso” Project. The idea isn’t exactly new, having been in development since 2019. After all, such a major change couldn’t be designed and implemented overnight. Part of the plan was revealed during the trial against Qualcomm, where Arm—unsuccessfully—sought to negotiate a new licensing deal.

Arm reportedly wants the “Picasso” Project to bring in around $1 billion a year from the smartphone industry over the next ten years. Only time will tell if the firm is able to achieve its goal.