Softbank founder Masayoshi Son said chip designer Arm will come back to the market within the coming five years, the Nikkei reported. Softbank bought Arm three years ago for USD 32 billion. Son did not rule out a listing in China or the US. "I don’t know which market it will be, but Arm will be preparing for IPO within the next five years,”the CEO told reporters in Taipei, Taiwan.
Softbank studying which products are affected by US trade ban with China
Son also said Arm was still studying whether it could continue to support Huawei after the US ban. Washington has imposed constraints that stop sales to Huawei of products containing more than 25 percent of US technology. "ARM is not stopping [its] relationship with Huawei," Son said, adding that the company does not want to break the law." The group was therefore studying which products were subject to the ban and which were not. It will resume shipping once products are given the green light. The BBC in May reported that Arm had told employees to stop "all active contracts, support entitlements and any pending engagements" with Huawei to comply with recently introduced US export controls.
Son was speaking at his first public appearance in Taiwan, in a debate on future technology in a world dominated by the US and China, the Group of Two. He had been invited by Foxconn founder Terry Gou, who this week stepped down as chairman of the iPhone assembler to run for the Taiwanese presidency.
Two 5G standards
Gou, speaking at the forum, suggested that a technological divide between the US and China was now inevitable. He said the US would define its own standards for next generation wireless technology, 5G, as China’s Huawei Technologies already dominated the global standard.”The U.S.’s 5G system will definitely be different from China,”Gou said, adding that "the world will have two specs and Taiwan should be able to accept the two. Our [Taiwan] opportunity is to have the bread buttered on the both sides.”
