ARM moves up and heads for 1.1 billion shipments this year

Chip-designer ARM is motoring back to its glory days with growing revenues and projections of 1.1 billion shipments for the year.

And the company, which designs chips for 80 per cent of the world's mobiles, signed 14 licence agreements in its last quarter, five of them with new customers (or partners, as ARM prefers to call them).

Warren East, ARM CEO, said, "[during] the last couple of years we maintained our investment in research and it is now paying off. You can buy our ARM 9 chips in 3G and smart phones now and in 2005 the ARM 11 will be in them with better functionality, giving better battery life."

In sterling, ARM's first quarter revenues showed a slight gain on the last quarter of last year, from £34m to £35m. But in dollar terms, the company saw a 12 per cent jump in royalties and a 14 per cent rise in licence fees to a total of $48.7m.

A company statement claimed that the fall in the value of the dollar effectively clipped £2.1m from the figures for the quarter.

Company CFO Tim Score explained: "Ninety percent of our sales are in dollars, around 40-50 per cent in the US. Our international customers work in a dollar market." He expects to see volumes grow by 40 per cent this year.

While the company's main revenue motor is the ARM 7 2G and 2G+ chip family which makes up 70 per cent of revenues, the 3G ARM 9 family is bringing in 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the total and is rising fast.