(12 February 2008 7:25 pm)

MUMBAI: ARM has celebrated 10 years of operation in the mobile market. It has been adecade since the launch of the ARM-powered Nokia 6110, the first mass-market phone based on the ARM7TDMI processor.

In 1997, ARM silicon partners shipped fewer than 10 million chips; in 2007, they shipped nearly three billion, with an average of 1.7 ARM-powered chips per mobile phone.

ARM's entry in mobile devices goes back to 1990 with the development of the Apple Newton, which arguably started the market for personal digital assistants.

However, it was the widespread adoption of ARM processors in mobile phones over the last 10 years that has helped ARM's silicon partners sell seven billion chips into the mobile market, out of the 10 billion cumulative ARM-powered SoCs.

ARM chose to licence its technology to silicon partners and charge a small royalty on ARM-powered processors shipped. OEMs saw the value in being able to source chips from multiple vendors with software compatibility.

Today, the number of ARM processor-based devices shipped is roughly 10 times greater than the volume of x86 chips that go into PCs.

"If you bought a GSM phone in 1998, it could have been the Nokia 6110," said ARM mobile solutions director Rob Coombs.

"At the time, phones were for talking or texting, with simple black-and-white displays," he said.

Over the past 10 years, the capabilities of mobile devices have grown in step.

Coombs says: "Today, you can choose an ARM11 family-based phone that can play YouTube videos, send and receive e-mail or run a 3D game with console-type quality. ARM supplies the engines, software and tools that make this possible."

ARM will be celebrating its 10 years in mass-market mobile devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where it will be demonstrating the next-generation ARM Cortex processors and Mali graphics technology that will power the devices of 2009.