ARM vs AMAT Comparison

Arm Holdings is the IP owner and developer of the ARM architecture (ARM stands for Acorn RISC Machine), which is used in 99% of the world's smartphone CPU cores, and it also has high market share in other battery-powered devices like wearables, tablets, or sensors. Arm licenses its architecture for a fee, offering different types of licenses depending on the flexibility the customer needs. Customers like Apple or Qualcomm buy architectural licenses, which allows them to modify the architecture and add or delete instructions to tailor the chips to their specific needs. Other clients directly buy off-the-shelf designs from Arm. Off-the-shelf and architectural customers pay a royalty fee per chip shipped.

Applied Materials is the largest semiconductor wafer fabrication equipment, or WFE, manufacturer in the world. Applied Materials has a broad portfolio spanning nearly every corner of the WFE ecosystem. Specifically, Applied Materials holds a market share leadership position in deposition, which entails the layering of new materials on semiconductor wafers. It is more exposed to general-purpose logic chips made at integrated device manufacturers and foundries. It counts the largest chipmakers in the world as customers, including TSMC, Intel, and Samsung.