CAT vs ARM Comparison

Caterpillar is the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. Its reporting segments are: construction industries (40% sales/47% operating profit, or OP), resource industries (20% sales/19% OP), and energy & transportation (40% sales/34% OP). Market share approaches 20% across many products. Caterpillar operates a captive finance subsidiary to facilitate sales. The firm has global reach (46% US sales/54% ex-US). Construction skews more domestic, while the other divisions are more geographically diversified. An independent network of 156 dealers operates approximately 2,800 facilities, giving Caterpillar reach into about 190 countries for sales and support services.

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.