Oblivious to stockmarket volatility, Cambridge UK technology company ARM says it has already opened up fresh opportunities for sales of its chips to the world’s leading product innovators.

CEO Simon Segars (pictured above) was in bullish mood as he unveiled revenues up 14 per cent to $407.9 million for the final quarter of 2015 with profit before tax 17 per cent higher at £138.7m.

It took the full year 2015 revenues to $1.488 billion – an increase of 22 per cent on 2014 – and pre-tax profit for the 12 months to £511.5m, a rise of 24 per cent.
Four billion ARM-based chips were shipped in Q4 – up 16 per cent year-on-year.

Perhaps the stand-out figure to emerge today was that non-mobile markets accounted for 55 per cent of Q4 processor shipments. That reflects ARM’s current strong presence in non-mobile markets and investment in FutureTech beyond mobiles.

If Apple smartphone sales are set to decline, as many UK and US observers are forecasting, ARM is fashioning a life outside.

Segars said: “2015 was a strong year for the shipment of chips containing advanced ARM technology, and momentum continued through the fourth quarter.

“During the year ARMv8-A surpassed 50 per cent share of smartphone shipments, Mali became the industry’s highest-shipping GPU architecture, and our partners increased their shipments into enterprise infrastructure and embedded markets.

“Demand for our technology is increasing and during the quarter we signed multiple licences for the next generation of high-performance and secure ARM processors.

“Our increased investments in both 2015 and 2016 will help us meet demand by extending the capabilities of our technology and the ecosystem, and will support long-term growth and returns for shareholders.”

Business Weekly has previously reported ARM’s progress with building a new flagship headquarters in Cambridge, which will bring a further surge in headcount.

At the end of 2015, ARM had 3,975 full-time employees, a net increase of 681 during the year – mainly engineers joining ARM’s processor R & D teams. ARM says 1,577 of those employees were based in the UK, 905 in the US, 628 in Continental Europe, 541 in India and 324 in Asia Pacific.

The group expects a further hike in those numbers, especially in Cambridge, as 2016 unfolds.