The Arm/Qualcomm Legal Battle Appears to Be Over

Arm and Qualcomm’s legal battle appears to be over, with Arm saying it has no intention of continuing to pursue efforts to cancel Qualcomm’s license.

Arm and Qualcomm’s legal spat began when the latter acquired Nuvia, a chip design firm founded by former Apple engineers. Like Qualcomm, Nuvia was an Arm licensee. Qualcomm used Nuvia’s designs as the basis of its latest Snapdragon chips, including those powering the first-gen Copilot PCs.

Arm sued Qualcomm, as well as canceled its license, saying Qualcomm tried to transfer Nuvia’s licenses to itself without getting Arm’s approval first. The jury in the case sided with Qualcomm, finding the company did not violate its agreement with Arm. At the same time, the jury deadlocked on whether Nuvia violated its contract with Arm, leaving the door for another trial. Arm initially said it intended to pursue that option, but it appears to have changed course.

In a, earnings call, via Seeking Alpha, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed that Arm has no further plans to threaten Qualcomm’s license.

Before I turn the call over to Akash, I would like to provide an update on the Arm vs. Qualcomm trial from December 2024. The jury’s verdict vindicated Qualcomm’s CPU innovations and affirmed that Qualcomm’s contract with Arm provides a license for Qualcomm’s products containing our proprietary Oryon CPUs in industries such as smartphones, automotive, next generation PCs, IoT, and data center. In addition, ARM recently notified us that it was withdrawing its October 22nd, 2024 notice of breach and indicated that it has no current plan to terminate the Qualcomm Architecture License Agreement. We’re excited to continue to develop performance leading, world-class products that benefit consumers worldwide that include our incredible Oryon custom CPUs.

The revelation is good news for Qualcomm, especially at a time when its Snapdragon chips are gaining traction in the Windows market. Amon revealed just how much of the market Snapdragon has captured.

We look at the United States, which one of the priority markets that we had, and the data show that the sale, within the sale of US retail of Windows laptops above $800, we had more than 10% share, which is actually consistent with the projection we made of how we’re going to grow under five years.

Given the importance and growing popularity of Arm-based semiconductors in the PC market, Qualcomm’s ability to continue making Arm-based chips is a big win for consumers, as well as the company.

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