South Korea’s regulator reportedly inspects Arm’s office

South Korea’s antitrust authority visited Arm Holdings’ Seoul office this week as part of ongoing scrutiny of the company’s licensing practices, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission is conducting unannounced inspections that stem in part from a complaint by Qualcomm, which alleges Arm is hurting competition by restricting access to its technology after running an open model for over 20 years.

Arm, based in the UK and majority-owned by SoftBank Group Corp., licenses chip designs and instruction sets to companies including Qualcomm and Apple.

Qualcomm has raised concerns with regulators in South Korea, the US, and Europe, warning that Arm’s shift away from open licensing and new chipmaking ambitions could threaten the broader chip industry.

Spokespeople for Arm and Qualcomm declined to comment, and a KFTC spokesperson also declined to comment.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

South Korea has fined chip makers before, so Arm’s license shift may draw tougher review

In 2016, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) fined Qualcomm KRW 1.03 trillion (South Korean won) for abuse of dominance through unfair licensing 1. South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld the penalty in April 2023 1.
That case centered on Qualcomm linking modem sales to patent licensing deals and making it difficult for rivals to access standard essential patents (SEPs), which are required to implement industry standards 1.
Qualcomm says Arm moved from an open model to tighter access after more than 20 years. KFTC carried out an on-site check, so regulators are scrutinizing the claims.
South Korean regulators police foreign tech firms that use dominance. The unannounced visit puts Arm at risk of a probe similar to Qualcomm’s.

Arm license uncertainty could speed Android makers’ move to RISC-V

Google now supports Android on RISC-V, an open instruction set architecture 2. The team plans to release full RISC-V Android emulators by 2024, with wearables first 2.
Qualcomm has shipped about 650 million RISC-V cores in Snapdragon microcontroller units 3.
If Arm’s licensing becomes more restrictive or costly due to regulatory pressure, Android original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) may accelerate evaluation of RISC-V alternatives, particularly for cost-sensitive devices like wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) products.
Vendors with RISC-V toolchains (software used to build and test code), IP cores (pre-designed blocks of chip logic), or migration services should prepare launch plans now 2. Android-on-RISC-V tooling and emulators are maturing 2.