Softbank

NVIDIA is already making big plans on its investments in the Arm ecosystem, most of which hinges on its acquisition of the UK-based company currently owned by Japan's SoftBank. We haven't heard much about the status of that process recently, but the latest news that has just surfaced isn't that encouraging, at least for NVIDIA. The acquisition has already been uncertain as far as the UK is concerned, and insiders are now saying that the country is inclined to reject the bid over national security concerns.

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SoftBank's Pepper robot has ceased production and is unlikely to return, insiders say, a premature retirement for the anthropomorphized robo-humanoid. Revealed back in 2014, Pepper was billed as "emotion-sensing" thanks to expression and voice analysis, a technique which SoftBank said would make the robot more welcome in retail environments.

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Leica has revealed a new smartphone, with the Leitz Phone 1 promising a hefty sensor for photography along with 5G capabilities. Although the camera company has co-branded smartphone cameras before now, the Leica Leitz Phone 1 takes a fairly atypical approach.

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Putting all speculation to rest, NVIDIA has finally announced that it is making an official bid to acquire Arm Limited from SoftBank. While the final say will be with regulators, this would mean that NVIDIA could soon be the owner of the intellectual property that pretty much powers the world's smartphones, cars, and many embedded devices. That does raise concerns about NVIDIA's hold on such IP and the computer graphics tech giant promises it will be business as usual as far as that licensing business goes.

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It's a bit strange to hear that Arm, whose chip designs and computer instruction set architecture or ISA has been quickly overtaking the computing world, might soon be sold off despite its growing popularity and ubiquity. That is exactly the case, however, for the England-based company who just four years ago was acquired by Japanese conglomerate Softbank. The latter has reportedly been in talks with many potential buyers, including Apple, but one name keeps rising to the top. NVIDIA, however, may be facing an uphill battle if it does make a formal bid for Arm Technologies.

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Some might presume that AMD and even Qualcomm ARE Intel's greatest rivals but, in truth, it might be the entire ARM world that has already silently surpassed the PC chipmaker. The ARM instruction set architecture or ISA is what drives many of the world's devices, from smartphones to routers to IoT to in-vehicle infotainment to supercomputers. ALL of these pay a debt, quite literally, to Arm, formerly ARM Holdings, whose owner Softbank is now reportedly looking for buyers, a list that includes NVIDIA and even Apple.

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The past weeks have been great for ARM, the designers of the most-used processors in the mobile and embedded world. From Apple's switch to its own ARM-based Silicon to powering the world's fastest supercomputer, ARM seems poised to become an even bigger threat to Intel than AMD was. Perhaps emboldened by that newfound prestige, the company has decided to stay focused on what it does best and spin off from that other popular IT market, the Internet of Things.

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It would appear that the United States Government is putting pressure on Huawei not only inside the USA, but abroad as well. On concerns that the brand Huawei is a sort of spy for the Chinese state, the US Government effectively carpet-bombed Huawei out of North America - getting all major carriers to drop all Huawei brand products in the process. Now it would seem that the US government wants not only T-Mobile and Sprint to continue to avoid Huawei, it wants their parent companies to drop Huawei hardware as well.

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Sharp heard you complaining about smartphone display notches and clearly decided to really give you something to moan about, with the new Sharp Aquos R2 Compact having not one but two of the screen cut-outs. The diminutive Android phone has one of Sharp's well-esteemed IGZO LCD displays, but to stay true to its "Compact" billing it takes bites out of that panel top and bottom.

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Toyota is the biggest Japanese automotive manufacturer and Softbank is one of the biggest tech firms in the country. The two firms have announced they have tied up to develop a platform that will allow the operation of self-driving vehicles. The duo sees these vehicles being used as mobile shops, hospitals, and other services in the future where fewer people control their own vehicles.

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GM Cruse is getting a $2.25bn injection from SoftBank, as General Motors' autonomous driving company prepares for its commercial launch in 2019. The investment - which comes alongside $1.1bn more from GM itself - sees GM Cruise valued at $11.5bn overall, with the SoftBank Vision Fund taking an almost 20-percent stake in the firm.

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After several months of negotiations, Japanese tech firm SoftBank will be acquiring a 20% stake in Uber as part of an investment deal with the troubled ride hailing company. Uber's many problems — which have been seen throughout 2017, including numerous reports of sexism, illegal business tactics, and questionable software — are also reflected in the company's updated valuation, which has dropped from roughly $70 billion to $48 billion.

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