HSBC vs ARM Comparison

Established in 1865 in Hong Kong, London-based HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world, with assets of USD 3 trillion and 40 million customers worldwide. It operates in around 60 countries with more than 200,000 full-time staff. The United Kingdom and Hong Kong are its two largest markets. The bank offers retail, commercial and institutional banking, global banking and markets, wealth management, and private banking.

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.