ARM Drives Momentum In Microcontrollers With Keil Acquisition

ARM can't kill use of 8051s by killing Keil. All they can do is move the users to IAR or Tasking or whoever. Note that this means that they lose money, since they won't be selling any 8051 tools. Not to say that no executive ever makes a stupid decision, but all such a move would do is cut ARM's income.

And it certainly won't win them any goodwill with the engineers or executives that suddenly have to switch. People will follow the path of least resistance in such a situation, and that path is to adopt another tool vendor, not completely redesign your hardware from scratch, and particularly not with product from a company that has (a) just annoyed you and (b) just demonstrated that if you do use their stuff, you can't really count on long-term support if it stops being trendy.

Keep in mind that ARM (proper) has no products. They just license IP. This means they have lots of cash pouring in but nothing to spend it on. Most companies in that position try to buy other companies for various degress of integration or diversification.

ARM's own ARM development tools were pretty weak. They can now replace those with Keil, and perhaps capture some of the market that promptly leaves to buy 3rd-party tools rather than use the ones from ARM.

ARM can't kill use of 8051s by killing Keil. All they can do is move the users to IAR or Tasking or whoever. Note that this means that they lose money, since they won't be selling any 8051 tools. Not to say that no executive ever makes a stupid decision, but all such a move would do is cut ARM's income.

And it certainly won't win them any goodwill with the engineers or executives that suddenly have to switch. People will follow the path of least resistance in such a situation, and that path is to adopt another tool vendor, not completely redesign your hardware from scratch, and particularly not with product from a company that has (a) just annoyed you and (b) just demonstrated that if you do use their stuff, you can't really count on long-term support if it stops being trendy.

Keep in mind that ARM (proper) has no products. They just license IP. This means they have lots of cash pouring in but nothing to spend it on. Most companies in that position try to buy other companies for various degress of integration or diversification.

ARM's own ARM development tools were pretty weak. They can now replace those with Keil, and perhaps capture some of the market that promptly leaves to buy 3rd-party tools rather than use the ones from ARM.

It is interesting to note that there have been no updates to the C51 product for over a year.

I wonder if it makes any sense to renew my subscription.

"It is interesting to note that there have been no updates to the C51 product for over a year.

I wonder if it makes any sense to renew my subscription."

I heard a rumour that version 8 was due out soon, but I should point out that that was before the takeover.