"The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology. The new company intended to further the development of the Acorn RISC Machine processor, which was originally used in the Acorn Archimedes and had been selected by Apple for their Newton project. Its first profitable year was 1993. The company's Silicon Valley and Tokyo offices were opened in 1994. ARM invested in Palmchip Corporation in 1997 to provide system on chip platforms and to enter into the disk drive market. In 1998 the Company changed its name from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd to ARM Ltd. The Company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in 1998 and by February 1999, Apple's shareholding had fallen to 14.8%."
Acorn had the original RISC concept and original design, but was on the ropes, Apple had the money and a product in which to use the design, and VLSI was the IC design house and chip foundry who had done the original design work on the RISC processor. It was a natural partnership.
My educated guess is that ARM really is now an acronym for Advanced RISC Machine, as APPLE, the major stockholder would not allowed a lesser partner's name to remain on it. . . especially on that had gotten its start making Apple II clones in Britain. I remember the Acorn and Orange British clones back in the early 80s and Stave Jobs was not pleased, especially when they started importing some to the USA.
Apple still holds the largest single block of shares, but not controlling interest. Apple does however own joint rights to the ARM architecture. . . which is one smart thing the post/pre Steve Jobs Apple CEOs did right.
My recollection of where I heard it was from a Steve Jobs interview. . . but he had selective memory on some of those things in favor of Apple.
I Note one major error in the articles on the Acorn RISC based desktops. They claim to have been the first RISC based desktop computers but that is clearly wrong. The Commodore Amiga, released a good three years prior to the Acorn, was the first RISC based desktop computer.
Thanks for remembering the Amiga... A product way ahead of its time and marketed almost like some Republicans market Conservatism...
The Commodore Amiga 1000 has a Motorola CPU 68000 same as first Mac
the Custom graphics and sound chips in the Amiga was by same guy that did the original custom chips for the Atari 400/800
the Amiga was That be to follow on to the Atari 400/800 By the atari’s designer but then Atari mamagment decided to go a Different way so he took the new machine to Commodore which was Atari arrival at the time