ARM shares continue on upward trend

Shares in chip designer, ARM have continued their meteoric rise this week, just two months after the company floated in London and New York. But some analysts have warned that Psion's recent deal with Ericsson, Nokia and later Motorola will not be that significant for ARM.

The Cambridge-based designer of Risc processors has a licensing deal with Psion, which bases its Series 5 handheld computer on the chip, and the expectation is that some next generation smartphones will also use ARM technology. However, Mitul Nehta, senior European research manager at Frost and Sullivan, said: "At this point in time, this is just another deal."

ARM's business model is all about working with many partners around the world. The company has offices in Seoul, Silicon Valley and Tokyo to help it maintain these relationships.

Another analyst said that while Psion forming Symbian with the world's three largest mobile phone manufacturers will "give it a lot more clout", the deal won't "change the company significantly in the short-term". The same goes for ARM, although over the next four or five years it could be one of a number of companies to reap some benefits from the creation of Symbian.

Robin Saxby, ARM's chief executive, declined to talk up the prospect of ARM benefiting from Symbian due to his firm being in a "quiet period" until it publishes interim results. However, he was bullish about alliances such as Symbian, and commenting on the future of multifunctional smartphones, he said: "We shouldn't underestimate the importance of GSM being invented in Europe. What's happened - with that and Symbian - just goes to show that not every advanced device comes out of Silicon Valley."